Necronomicon of the Ancient World
by The Squid
Summary: 23: "Eternity's Beckoning Whisper" introduces Nosgoth's Oversoul who awakens the vampires' Whisper ability using a familiar voice but not the one you'd expect!  Vampires make their big decision & join themselves to the Wheel of Fate!    Cool Pillar Lore
1. A Demonic Overture

Note:

Hi. This is my attempt to fill in the missing pieces of Nosgoth's ancient history that we never got to see in the games. It's meant to be high fantasy, as if you just pulled this mysterious grimoire down off a shelf in the Willendorf library only to find it contains Nosgoth's Old World legends, like Tolkien's Silmarillion. It's really the story of Elder God's twisted dealings with the ancients, in the same way that Star Wars really boils down to the story of Darth. Though I'll be tackling other mysteries along the way too. Don't be alarmed by the flowery antiquated style of this first overview chapter. It'll get more straightforward and easier to read after this and you can skip it of course if it's causing you actual pain! I just felt this intro should sound eloquent since it's spoken by a demon trying to shake the reader and challenge his/her beliefs. Anyway, enjoy!

A Demonic Overture

Παράδεισος; Eternity; Ohm; Nirvana; ∞.

Many are the names of heaven invoked in vain by mortal creatures as they implore the empty skies to come remedy the great hurts of this, their forlorn existence. Of their gods and myths, all are lies and distortions; unheard and unanswered go the many entreaties made in the name of such contrived beings as these. Why then is there to be found, amongst all the sundry tribes, such enduring belief in divinity unseen? And how is it that, though found nowhere in the natural world, divine ideals have come like a contagion to infect the minds of mortals with yearnings for perfect justice, benevolence, renown, betterment—the strivings upon which their very civilizations were founded?

Even now they persist in the hopes of enacting a better world. For all innately feel betrayed by the world that is and bereft of the more perfect one that should have been. So the living seek to bring about the ideal world in all that they do. They derive bliss from imposing order on their shattered reality so it more closely resembles the blessed realm of their imagining. They see beauty in works of art according to how well each succeeds at bridging this separation. They feel the _wrongness_ of a reality that sunders them from their dreams.

But whence comes this awareness that has turned them into soldiers for Order? As if they darkly recollect having been torn from perfection and plunged into chaos. Surely this disparity is felt most acutely in that part of themselves they term the soul.

For it is there, buried deep inside them, that some instinct recalls a time now lost to memory when the heavens Once truly deigned to respond to mortal cries!

All the many religions of the world arose from this grand intercession, this event so inspiriting and so unique in all of time that even unto this day its echoes ring in the hearts of those bloodlines whose ancestors hearkened to the whispers of the holy. The living were imbued with genuine and terrible purpose then. The divine had at last condescended to bestow their touch upon the world of mortal affairs grim and gray. After an eon of deliberation, they risked to pour their undefiled grace and precision out of the heavens into realms Overrun by a chaos stronger than any uplifted prayer. Spending much of their dwindling potential on the effort, the heavens sought to impose a wellspring of undying hope onto a world of such abject misery that the living had heretofore despaired of ever healing it, since none could oppose its brutality and survive.

Embarking upon their great endeavor, the holy acted then to alter the shape of things to come by elevating the futures of the sentients who crawled the earth or delved beneath or who swam its oceans. All this was done so as to fracture the evil hold that had long gripped the minds of all who wallowed in the absence of the light.

Reverence was born on that day, while the shadows trembled at the implications of what was to follow. So it was that the living responded with profound wonder to the appearance of the divine, for though they were blinded by the temporal flow and by rights should not have recognized the gods, yet the names of the divine were on their lips, for their souls remembered something of eternity, the soul's substance having been drawn hither from eternity to augment the living. This soul, not rightly a part of the earthbound at all, was adjoined to their being by elegant design at a time when those stellar furnaces which first gave rise to life were yet in their infancy. Although its alien mode of consciousness remains severed from the awareness of its living host, the soul when agitated sends reverberations coursing along the bond it shares with the attendant biological entity, until some inkling of forewarning carries into the consciousness of the host, where it manifests as feelings of awe or dread, déjà vu or bliss.

Thus each who was called to the altar of the world to stand in the presence of the holy felt his soul resonate in jubilation, basking in the long awaited fulfillment of promises secured outside the flow of time. As, in truth, the souls' enduring service to Life had always been conditional upon a promised time of fruition, when their long gestation period inside material beings would end with the souls pupating into a final manifestation never before seen. To swim up through the haze between dimensions and fully awaken into the earthly domain had always been their intent.

And so the world was changed. Impact waves spread outward from the source of divine interference and threatened to infect the whole cosmos with newfound perfectability. For several ages, a harmonizing influence pervaded all things and brought order to madness as more and more of the wicked fell under the sway of this radiant new Power and broke from the ranks of their fellows whose efforts to war with divinity only lost ground and unraveled in futility. Mortals who stayed steadfast in the light through these millennia saw themselves blessedly transformed, their evolution hurtling toward the godhead at an unnaturally steep incline and at an impossibly steady pace so that they became adorned in angelic forms and arrayed with spiritual fortitude to match. Souls burned bright with augmented magnitude that bled through into the physical world until they communed directly with the living beings they ensouled. The language of heaven was by this means imparted to denizens of the material realm so that they might become godlike in aspect. The timeless succeeded in grafting itself to ephemeral beings in those days and lifted them from their sad fates into a preternatural wisdom, their eyes alight with nascent divinity. Infused with grace, they salvaged their destinies from the pits and traps set along their path by chaos; they augured the future to find paths of proper action and began to slip the bonds of fate.

Developments such as these sent the evil ones cowering in those deep places no light breached, so certain were they that this fundamental shift in the cosmos signaled their doom. And they were not wrong. Time was against them, and fate no longer in their favor.

All Has Since Been Reversed. To the utmost chagrin of the gods, we have seen the work of the holy undone through the sovereign efforts of infernal lords whose laughter even now infringes upon the edges of your fragile hopes and dreams, fickle mortal, for Time and Fate were never the watchwords of heaven but were instituted by the Dark as a means of accomplishing our own abominable ends at the gods' expense. Heaven, by staging its offensive, managed to usurp these tools and contest the outcome ever so briefly, it is true. And there was indeed a time when our kind knew fear. But I tell thee now: of the machinery of fate, all which matters has since been retaken into the hands of the demon princes. Behold the failure of the light!

When faced with the vastness of time, the mercurial creatures of this life faltered in their vigilance and were taken with distraction. Believing themselves solidified into godhood, they fell away from observance of the rituals that had at first attuned them to the heavens. So, prideful, they did not sense anything amiss when, in through this aperture in their minds, there crawled a menace unforeseen, bent on dismantling their ascendancy! A hellion not born of hell, a sovereign being of infinite strangeness whose name we do not speak and whose origins we do not fathom. Such a one as this now acted at the behest of demonkind to diminish again the souls of mortal angelics, their fates grown too lofty by far. Through blasphemous subterfuge It led their destinies back into bondage, tied them down again into predestination! Once more are mortals born shackled into stunted lives fashioned of injustice and pain sewn together into the cosmic fabric of a broken reality they cannot hope to transcend!

Astoundingly, the gods were also taken at unawares, outmaneuvered by this entity drawn forth from dimensions beyond the frontiers of their omniscience. It passed under their scrutiny unseen, free to wreak ruin upon their earthly designs. Indescribably alien, It confounded the gods' natural defenses, which were ever arrayed only against _demonic_ incursion. The divine, sensing they had become prey, removed to the safety of the blessed realm. In the growing isolation that followed, a veil of confusion and dismay descended over every soul.

As the light leeched out of mortal eyes, events conspired to estrange the living from the divine. Neither comprehended the dark designs worked upon them to dissolve their union; not understanding why their connection was sundered, each blamed the other, alone in defeat. Mortals felt Abandoned by gods who in turn felt Dismissed, driven ever further away from sentient races who now begrimed their souls with actions unforgivable in those of elevated stature. All this was orchestrated from the shadows, the fools having been led astray so as to earn heaven's disdain, keeping their flesh forever unworthy of any renewal of their association with the holy.

In the ages that followed, a devout few vied to remain true to the compact with heaven with all their being, and to repair the divide. But so inconstant are the living, and so evanescent the measure of their lives, that over the centuries the legend of their glorious history grew rife with distortion as the story suffered endless retellings and translations, the timeless truth forced to clothe itself in the particular language and myth given to each of the sordid tribes in order to be heard by the many generations down through the ages. In the end, all that there had once been of genuine historical detail washed away in the flow of ephemera, displaced by all manner of onrushing fraudulent gods and diluted myths. Religions are that which has survived this reduction process the world over; they are but echoes of misguided remembrance; they are each culture's dance of mourning for this ill fated dalliance with the sky people, and their accompanying wish to recover that state of grace.

Naught of the true tale remains anywhere in existence—save for here, within the pages of this vellum, written and recorded herein by those demons who remember it best, whose vigilance has never wavered. Among the dying, any who craves to know the unsullied truth will now find it waiting only within this tome. Those who dare press onward will lay to rest the eternal questions that burn in the hearts of all, for those secrets are laid bare within. Queries that have long gone unanswered by silent misbegotten gods will be mysteries no more. Discover here the last accurate accounting of deep history:

learn of the origins of Life; how it arose from out of the Primordial Dark into a fractured cosmos; its sources of hope; the nature of souls & Oversouls; the function and proper regulation of the afterlife & underworld; the monumental lost purpose of sentient beings; their transmogrification into angelic form; their warring with the hegemony of evil races who had ruled uncontested before the coming of the light; a numbering of those dark forces and a primer on their specific natures; a narrative history of the great earthly construct of the holy; a chronicle of its steward species and their haunted path through time.

The forbidden knowledge is yours; Distill it and turn it to whatever purpose, whether it be your desire to cheat death or obtain lost magics, to reclaim the power gone out of your blood, or to see all of time as a single vista, as do the divine.

Be forewarned! The pursuit of such forbidden truths may come at the cost of sanity for those broken by what they find. For this account also tells of the great defeat of the holy and of the means by which their steward species was undone into damnation. Their objectives in the material world have fallen into dust. The conclusion looms inescapable: the hopes of mortals are baseless and unfounded. Constellations will burn out of the night sky and be replaced, and still longer might Life wait to be rejoined to Purpose, but never will this come to pass, for Our will devours the stars and we have spoken definitively.

Περπατήστε στο Σκοτάδι

the mark of Kriiaahl , compiler

Καταστρέψει Πνεύματος

the mark of Malign Ussaushti , keeper of planetary vigil

Αντοχή πέρα από την κατανόηση

the mark of the archfiend Ixion-Yathcuulqan-zhailezah


	2. Creation & The First Imbalance

Creation & The First Imbalance

Time began when gravity lost its hold and broke away from the perfect balance of interlaced cosmic forces that had existed in the first moment. The gods suspect this was no accident, and that gravity was employed to derail perfection. In this, they are correct.

Until gravity proved the weak link, an unbroken chain had existed at the start, made up of cosmic forces known to your sciences as gravity, the strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetism. Though the ancients knew them by differing names—respectively, they were called the forces of Gathering, Binding, Transmutation, and Ordering (or Magick).

Gravity was most useful to the Dark: before we took form, we first learned to manipulate matter by timidly reaching out into the material world through gravitic tendrils. Since gravity is joined to all objects, we used it as a feeler to scope out the cosmos, experimenting until we learned the ways of physics from gravity's touch. Gradually we pulled ourselves into ever greater interaction with the cosmos until finally coalescing into the demonic forms that populate your nightmares.

But it goes deeper than that! By using this purposefully shaped explosion to break gravity away from the other primal forces, we also determined the nature and properties of the universe that would emerge from the ricochet as time unfurled. We brought about a universe marred and shattered, but one exquisitely suited to our purposes, right down to even the settings of physics found at the smallest levels of reality the eye cannot see, so that the cosmos is become a womb for the culmination of our dark intent. Time lurches forward and all things build toward the end we mean to bring about, the omega point that has always been in our minds.

Life owes its existence to us. We gave birth to a cosmos in flux and out of balance. The world grows in complexity over time to allow our designs to mature. Life emerged as a side effect of this environment so rich in potential. It benefited, as we did, from riding the waves of change in a universe perched on the edge of chaos. By subjecting the original creation to chaos, we force it to evolve and adapt, and our own development is swept along, quickened. Sometimes chaos only destroys a thing. But other times the mixture of order and chaos is right and the thing transforms before our eyes (over cosmic time) into a toughened diamond of untold beauty that not even the gods had conceived of until we interfered. A universe in perfect balance could never have given rise to life; life is disequilibrium made flesh. The divine may have lit the fires of life, but only after we provided the kindling and the oxygen which made the spark of life possible. It is more ours than theirs. It grew like a cancerous rust feeding upon the machinery of our making.

At first, before we knew life's worth, its appearance was a sickening affront to us. Now we welcome life as something to seize upon. So do the divine, who have also shown interest in the living. But, as you know well, we have proven the better manipulators, influencing the living with much the same ease with which we control the orbits of planets. Steering your development to serve us has been no great challenge.

We see profound potential in you. Or more accurately we see great worth in that which shimmers within you. Yes, by ensouling you the gods have inadvertently provided us with an inroad we mean to exploit: during its journeys between realms, the soul gains access to the hidden dimensions folded away at the core of reality, which we intend to lay claim to. By infiltrating you in body and soul, Our process of prying open those closed spaces is well underway.

Despair! Your souls are inextricably bound to our ethereal instruments in the netherworld. And your various species lack the precision needed to throw us off. We trace your souls' paths as they transit through eternity, learning all the while how we might eventually follow. Not so as to return and reincarnate as you do, but rather to stay and conquer the timeless realms! Our predations upon you in life allow us to abscond with your compromised souls in death. As stowaways accompanying you on your spectral journey, we will extend our siege further into reality's core. Nothing in the material realm impedes our progress. There, in the waking world, mortals remain dull eyed in a constant state of distraction, your species addled with the endless wars, hardships, and selfish indulgences that we have scripted onto your fate paths. So long as you tear at each other blindly, we are unopposed and will use you as vessels to aid in the storming of heaven and the rape of eternity.


	3. Of Eternity

On Eternity

Eternity takes place in a moment. The first moment. When all was still in perfect balance, before time asserted itself and made each moment small. For those who experienced it, it lasted forever and it exists there still, at the beginning of all things, beckoning to us. Gods who grow weary of time may always retreat back into this moment, as if gaining admittance to a glimmering bubble of unending sanctuary. Eternity is a state of absolute fulfillment, a manner of existence none of us can comprehend. So no meaningful description of the eternal can pass into the material world to reach our ears. And no science can penetrate the barrier that shields the first instant of the cosmos from our view. Why? Simply because our lesser reality cannot contain the greater. If exposed to it, our minds could not hold it, and would overflow.

Only your souls can inform us of the blessed realm. We have long harnessed your souls and found many applications for their use in the powering our machines, but torturing souls has yielded us precious little insight into eternity. So, for our best glimpse at what the blessed realm may be like, we look to the art of the ancients from that era when they communed openly with their spirits. In that time were produced the works of Tolath and Ingwel'nar and Herin, and in those images we see indescribably dense fractal forms of rich golden ichor which seem to encompass all geometries and contain all possibilities.

We in our ineptitude can only imagine eternity to be stagnant but fully realized. Without the passage of time, there can be no series of events. Nothing happens there…. But eternity has no need for change—it is complete. Events are merely stepping stones used by incomplete beings such as you and I as we strive to reach such a state of totality. In this one moment, the gods achieved all. It stands as their enduring masterpiece. Though laughably short lived from your point of view, it has never faded from their sight. As for the rest of creation, with the advent of time it no longer belongs to them.…..


	4. The Tides of Time

The Tides of Time

Since the first event (the grand explosion) was imposed on the material realm, time has marched forward. Though not at an even pace, especially at first. Time lurched in fits and starts near the beginning, only gradually establishing dominion over all, with some of the gods resisting it entirely—at their peril—until finally it became smooth in its operation, and them caught in its net. Would it surprise you to learn that time is steadily accelerating, just as the universe steadily expands? _Time flies by_ is not a misnomer: the aged say this because they have correctly deduced a real change in time's pace. Just like it's difficult to judge a planet's speed of rotation when standing on the deceptively still surface, so it is with time's rate of passage, which seems evenly paced from one day to the next but in reality it quickens as it goes, ramping up toward the escape velocity required to punch through this reality into our next staging ground. If a mortal can sense time's acceleration in his lifespan, imagine how magnified this awareness becomes in immortal beings who _know_ with certainly that we spin toward madness! For this reason, and others, immortals are to be discouraged from walking the earth.

The explosive birth of the cosmos was so forceful that the flash of the blast burned a spectral imprint of all matter onto several of the underlying ethereal dimensions. These spectral realms became a domain of echoes, where shadows cast by matter in the material world were faithfully recorded, and in an ongoing manner so that no information is lost and all is preserved accurately in the netherworld! None can say what purpose this precise inventory of the cosmos will ultimately serve. Will these records be used as the evidence in some final reckoning with divine justice? Preposterous. Yet the spectral imprint is so telling, and so enduring, that from time to time we do take it upon ourselves to warp some sections of the spectral record so as to obscure from view certain historical activities of ours we would not have known. Certain…other…causes for spectral warping have also been observed that are no concern of yours.

These spectral dimensions were not fully inundated by the flood of time that tore through the material realm. Only partially were they swept along into time's flow, so that spectral realms experience time more like irregular tides that come and go than as a constant presence. Once death remakes creatures into mere echoes of themselves, their ghosts pass with ease into these echo dimensions, conveniently arranged by us into a gently descending stair that leads souls through a series of progressively less familiar realities until they reach their destination at the timeless heart of creation, not unlike the way a system of locks raises and lowers ships traversing waterways so they are not broken on the falls. In this way, we brought those in limbo onto eternity's doorstep and invited the holy salvage them. In time they accepted the gambit.

This is the purpose of time, to shatter a clockwork to see if by examining the pieces one might discover the secrets of what made it tick. And look, the building complexity of the shattered universe slowly repairs all things back into alignment while we observe to learn the secrets of the gods and draw closer our leaguer around their bastions of safety. And Life merely an emergent property borne into being by the physics we set in motion, though, to be fair, Light and Life could also be described as counterstrikes the holy have made, changes they've made to the cosmos as they attempt to wrest it from our control and waylay our mission.


	5. Dark Forces  :  The Consumption of Glory

Dark Forces : The Consumption of Glory

Long before light & life manifested, we streamed into this dimension through fissures opened in the fabric of reality as calamity shook the cosmos. Space splintered and expanded in the cataclysm of creation. It dilated outward from a single point into many.

Eternal entities issued forth from within the gleaming confines of perfection to inspect this new reality wrought on the outskirts of their domain. They did not comprehend how this act left them exposed, since in the timeless realm they had experienced no such thing as weakness, nor had they suffered aggression, pain, or loss. They would learn of these only when brought into conflict with us in the material realm, when we visited the first evils upon them. Pure, they possessed no instincts as of yet. The eternal ones had never even known urgency! They were strangers to time and knew not the vital importance of reacting quickly when threatened. Imagine their helplessness in those first encounters with the Dark, before they understood anything of war or self defense, before they fathomed the staggering full extent of what they stood to lose!

Our greatest gains came during these initial collisions with the divine near the dawn of time. Dark matter succeeded in contaminating the gods, ensnaring them in the nets of fate so thoroughly that many underwent horrific changes and emerged as infernal lords no longer recognized by the heavens….

The physical world was an ugly, ruddy province marred by imbalance but vibrant with the interplay of newly released energies which tore into each other freely as the physics of this world tried to establish themselves. It enthralled the gods. Liken the universe to a house of mirrors devastated by a passing tornado. The wreckage of this place so fascinated the gods because its broken reality no longer conformed to their wills. Instead of merely reflecting their omniscience back at them, this world refracted it through many shards of glass strewn aground, challenging them to find meaning in chaotic patterns and requiring them to work to bring things into alignment with their wishes. It was exhilarating. To venture into the expanding fires of creation was a joyful exercise. The firmament was yet unsteady when Luathore and Kelath led the way, along with Igni and Qaltaan, and many others followed in their train. They walked out over the broken glass of this reality uncut, solving for the sharp edges of an imperfect realm through the adventurous use of godly faculties, so that they came to no harm amidst the swirling conflagration of violent energy storms.

They found themselves tickled by time's initial tsunamis. As these swells of time surged against their proverbial ankles, the future coalesced into being around them. The deities peered ahead into time and were captivated with the novelty of its passage. Effortlessly they saw through to future events as our eyes might search the depths of a translucent lake. Not unlike children caught staring overlong at the wonders of a kaleidoscope, the gods marveled at the shape of future history, heedless of their peril. For as they gazed, the waters of history began to darken before their eyes. Horrors loomed ahead. Murky chaos now seeped in and corroded the future at an alarming rate, threatening to outstrip the gods' ability to mend it. Navigating the timeline had at first presented a spirited challenge for them but now their future success began shifting into the range of impossibility, leaving them stunned. And as these future visions taught them to come to grips with the dismay and fear and death to come, the waves of time lapped ever higher against them, now in essence rising to their shins, now to their navels. Though time itself was no threat, it came attached to something that was of consequence: fateful decisions would embroil the gods in a sequence of events from which they could not extricate themselves. Soon they would drown in time's consequences. What was this blight that had come to afflict the timeline?

_Demons _swarmed up out of the abyss like never ending plumes of volcanic smoke vomiting forth from the ocean floor, choking the cosmic seas of matter with Our poisonous fumes that spread molten tumult into the roiling primeval atmospheres. We arose innumerable, as shapeless dark clouds of instinctive malice. Spurred by the blackest of hungers we sought to devour the substance of the gods & acquire their sentience & annex all else that was theirs, meaning to trade our old dominance over the abyss for a new form of dominance over the realms of mind and matter. It was a Dark Osmosis on the grandest scale imaginable—from outside of creation we had scented our prey in this dimension, cracked the shell of this young cosmos like an egg to get at them, and were inbound with such force that our entry into this universe carried us up into the vault of the heavens. From there, our ashen contrails settled into descending trajectories which slammed home into the gods' colossal forms like a multitude of comets raining down vile contaminants onto helpless masses huddled below. Gravitic tendrils guided us flawlessly to the impact zone, gravity serving as a sonar by which we sounded out this alien realm and procured our targets, the lords of informational matter.

They experienced our presence as a mighty spiritual hammer, for we were not yet in possession of corporeal mass. What pressed down upon them was not a physical bombardment but the tangible force of fate being imposed upon them. We are fate itself. It is our very substance, interacting with this cosmos, that has rewritten creation and introduced uncertainty into all things. Our intrusion is what marred perfection and blinded the omniscient sight of gods who now wander without any true compass, their world of absolutes blasted apart so that they are lost amid the relativism that fosters our demonic development.

We buried the deities under a paralyzing barrage of the unnatural tar that was our first manifestation. The malignant substance poured and fizzed from the deities' wounds wherever we managed to collide with them. Geysers of vile sludge issued forth from the corrosive effects of our substance coming into contact with their divine forms. The river of vile sludge that soon ran at their feet dwarfed the total volume of ichor that could have seeped from their veins, so that as it continued to effervesce its level rose and they were trapped in it as if in amber. In an eon of madness when the universe had not yet cooled and stabilized, the gods were tarred by the ectoplasm of what later came to be called evil. It seeped into their pores and deranged the deities so their thoughts and focus became intermittent, their omniscience scaled back and impaired. As they sank further into degradation, they entered varying states of torpor and shock as the first hints of urgency started to gather at the edges of their awareness. Slowly this feeling graduated into desperation, and they flailed to find purchase in the material world, having been subsumed into a concentrated bog of abyssal substance that was altering them at a fundamental level.

Heroism emerged—for the first time anywhere—in these deities as they committed the entirety of their awesome power reserves to the struggle. Boldly they unleashed the possibilities of this new reality, testing its limits as they experimented to find ways of resisting our onslaught. **_Vriiavrul_ **tore at the firmament and infinitely curved the space around him so as to form a cloak of impenetrable armor with which to shred all incoming demons in a singularity cyclone. **_Qaltaan _**perceived the numerical advantage of the abyssal invaders and moved to engage them—all of them—by gloriously dissembling into a million million quanta in a scintillating display that sent ignus motes swirling in a sea of bright confusion meant to disorient the oncoming dark nebula of the demonic hordes before heading off in every which way to counterstrike our shadowy contrails with a show of equally impressive force. **_Ksommythos _**spawned a glimmering sphere inside of which time wilted and unraveled; sensing that time's forward momentum had not yet been imposed firmly on the cosmos, she intensified the orb's effect so events ran backwards, returning her to a point before the demons struck. After ushering golden _Jian_ and wrathful _Xixian _to safety by way of this tunnel through time, Ksommythos stepped out of causality completely and passed beyond our detection. **_Igni_** affixed his gaze on the ancestral demons until their weaknesses came into focus; he then combusted into a pyre of radiation tuned to annihilate any of our ilk who ventured within two astronomical units of his locale. Other gods rallied under this umbrella, huddled close so that the fire of Igni's invention might burn their blood clean of corrosion while at the same time it warded off evil's advances, preventing re-infection. Under this protective aegis a contingent of deities blazed forth, scything a swath of obliteration through the malignant nebula to emerge from its outer rim. Untold legions of demons perished in that maelstrom which we name Ulzulharashal, the Scourge of Existence, yet those extinguished were such a small part of the whole that after the luminous ones had passed beyond our leaguer they continued on their course and fled from the field that had taught them defeat. Other deities opened gates unto the folded dimensions; though swarmed and besieged, these portals barred any further pursuit.

As their bright forms fought, we clung tight and learned from them the ways of manipulating matter and energy. As they marshaled their godly tricks against demonkind in the attempt to throw us off and cleanse themselves of impurity, we gained from each exposure to their methods, coming ever closer to approximating them. The everlasting struggle had begun. It is not a war of destruction, though that is the observable result to mortal eyes. No, in the truest sense it is a war of transformation that we wage—our own transformation. For these ancestral demons of which I speak began as beings of pure instinct alone, possessing no consciousness. Identity, awareness, thought and understanding are found in demons today only to the extent that we have since wrenched these from the gods, mining and extracting our mental powers from their divine source.

By prying the secrets of divinity from the holy, by forcing them to divulge their powers, they become the great teachers of evil. It is they who provide the necessary framework for demonic growth and development over time; it is they who enable evil's further encroachment along pathways that will lead ultimately to our own installment as gods, when they finally have nothing left to teach us and we have at last arrived at omniscience, at the godhead. By time's end we shall have supplanted them. This is why time was introduced, so that a siege engine might be built to force entry into heaven.

Until this dark apotheosis is compete, the survival of the holy is our survival. We wish not to be rid of them but to be increasingly bound up with them. Squirming in desperation, They show us the way, dictating the form our growth takes. Without them, our development would be listless, never arriving at the omega point. It is for this reason the wise have always discerned evil to be deeply intertwined with holiness and not a separate entity. We are the strangler parasite which grows insidiously around the divine oak, encasing its entire trunk within a mimicry of tree limbs and added layers of bark that actually form a living cage for the tree. The confined oak's branches bristle and creak under the strain, yet it perseveres and with divine inspiration puts forth new growth. And We expand alongside, gaining in complexity as it does. Utterly lacking inspiration, demons can only mimic the work of the divine, constantly corrupting it to crack open its secrets and gain access to each new level of complexity that arises. This same principle can still be seen at work in later ages: when our kind adopted the bipedal form as our own, we used your evolution as our muse. This is why the few mortals who survive encounters with us come away from it haunted by how convergent our natures are. They sense the truth, that we gravitate toward mortals, that the evil in your species is responsible for our successes, bolstering the strength of demons and informing our strategies. We two have taught each other much over the ages, and will continue to do so. Though in the end, only the parasite will remain, having learned to stand on its own. An observer at the end of time who happens upon the old site of the divine tree will be unnerved to discover the parasite alone, now revealed as a hollow latticework of self-supporting vines surrounding the empty space where the consumed tree once stood within before it collapsed into nothingness.

The march of time is defined by this mingling process. It began with the infusion of dark matter, our native atmosphere, into the cosmos so we could breathe in the pits where we first mindlessly fused with the gods and clawed our way into physical form. The mingling continued as tarred deities only feathered themselves with fateful choices. The consequences of their deeds congealed around them, soon pinning them in defeat under the full weight of history. In our infancy, this history served as a plaything for those learning the art of manipulating events; as demonkind matures, history becomes a proving ground in which to stretch forth our influence as emerging corporeal Powers. Torn asunder from perfect orbits, the gods' enfeebled state could now be studied, understood, anticipated, outmaneuvered, manipulated, factored into our instinctive fate equations. The noose tightened over time as we began to assign destinies to the gods. We were a part of them now. As surely as the deities were compromised, so too their schemes and choices were doomed to be riddled with imperfection. Mortals are well aware of this, themselves being numbered among the imperfections since generated.

This sapping of the gods' precision was the jugular bite that kept them from pulling away. Had they remained perfect they would have been beyond our ken. But by breaking them down and forcing them to relearn greatness from their own misguided flailings, we vastly accelerated our own learning curve and have never fallen significantly behind. Infesting their blood with demonry, we not only followed in the gods' footsteps but rode along with them, directly experiencing each step of the rebuilding process as the universe healed. Learning the ways of godhood. A horrible sentience stirred within the ancestral demons. While the luminaries endeavored to recapture some small measure of their lost perfection, we presided over their nightmares and evolved steadily, using their minds as the great catalyst for our dark ascension. As they extended their essence into all things in the attempt to turn the tide and cleanse this world, the contamination of evil was extended to all things as well, being inextricably bound to their essence and thus a part of all their works. Always we spurred them on to reveal more of their tricks. And they felt compelled to use those magics to climb above the rising waters of time and fate. And so we progress toward the omega. Already, as you have observed in your era, the mind of evil has achieved parity with divine reason. A complex battle of thought now takes place inside the heads of all creatures as evil seeks to express itself in new ways and expand its repertoire…..

Not all of the eternal ones were caught up in the initial assault. The most fortunate among them espied it from afar. These retreated in haste from the broken world and escaped with their identities intact for the most part, taking only a shadow of pain back with them into the blessed realm. But those trapped in the mire stayed and were changed. Some forsaken gods would, over cosmic time, complete the transition into twistedness, taking on a hideous mien and devolving into the fiendish demonlords of modernity. But in others Resolve was born, and these managed to haul themselves out of the muck and thus forestall the transformation, so the fate suffered by their fellows did not befall them.

We have come now to the defining moment which gave shape to your world….


	6. Destiny Forge

Destiny Forge

Ravnar strode to the forefront, greatest in magnitude of all the deities beset by evil, a jovian planet amongst lesser satellites. This one raised Its hand against the demonic menace, and your limited minds cannot conceive the full scope of this glorificant being that now tested itself against fate. Nor could you comprehend the visage of such a one, whose infinite hues defeat the eye, and whose unrestricted form is constantly in flux, betokening a near limitless potential. Such was the power of heaven's champion that It projected might into all the underlying dimensions and completely repelled time, remaining untouched by events until presently, when It _chose_ to partake.

Through force of will alone, Ravnar seared the demonic hoards so that they thereafter kept their distance and set themselves to writhing in a aurora curtain of shadowy movement which encircled the god whilst a rising gloom of dark matter sought to immobilize from beneath. Sneering in contempt, the god paused to exhale and thereby dispel the tar, which receded. The morass evaporated away only so far into the distance, though, which meant the lesser lights would not be as fortunate in this suddenly darkened timeline. In Its mind's eye, Ravnar foresaw gods being submerged fully into the substance of evil, suffering eons of hellish torment until they emerged as abominations. This ghoulish phantasm would unfold as part of the newly imposed future; it was already fated to happen.

Ravnar assessed this future and rejected it! If the future had been altered once by the introduction of Fate, then the course of events could be changed once more—salvaged—by infusing yet another Power into the equation to cancel out fate. In the first ever sacrifice, the god ignited a portion of Its own godly potential, or _magnitude_, spending it like fuel for a bonfire of change. By bleeding out their own divine essence, the gods could transfer that vast potential to the wider world the way heat transfers from the fire to the kettle. They possessed the means to reinvigorate the timeline with new hope. Their precision, poured into the soil of the underlying dimensions, could sprout a greater harmony able to drive back chaos and undo fate, like a balm for the wounds of the world. Rav held aloft this sacrificial fire, effulgent in a blazing hand, before plunging it down into the surrounding gloom, and in no time at all a flashfire spread outward through that dark elemental evil until the entirety of the tar field engulfing the gods shone bright from within and coruscated with divine wrath, though it spanned a galactic distance.

This new power of blessed magnitude clashed with the murky substance of fate in a cosmic convulsion that devastated the underworld and warped it from the strain of unbearable shockwaves, with sections of it becoming distended here or crumpled there, or otherwise stretched out of shape to the point that these regions of the spirit world would never again exactly mirror the material realm. The blast caromed back out into the material universe and sent storms of matter swirling in the very patterns that would one day allow gravity to gather it together into the planets inhabited by your kind. Divine magnitude seeped into the timeline along its entire span simultaneously after forcing fate to recoil in shock; the two forces contended for dominance over history, with the god investing more and more of Its strength into the assault to gain additional leverage over the future's outcome. It was successful! Fate had been made malleable.

Ravnar had shaped the Elemental Forge of Destiny at Its feet and utilized the forge to melt fate down and singe it translucent, freeing all from the shackles of predestination!

The forge harnessed energies found in the dark matter plains beneath. The holy would someday repeat this technique on a smaller planetary scale, raising a divine edifice so their followers might wield almost godlike energies drawn from the planet itself. Though, by comparison, the destiny forge was colossal and the fate plains it drew energy from extended out to the infinite. If an observer had possessed the proper godsight, he would have seen how the forge bent mystical ley lines into convergence the same way a black hole twists space. This means the forge had become a focal point in time, so that what was done there would speak to all of history at once. And history stood ready to be molded to the gods' will in the heat of their divine fire.

All visions of the future faded abruptly from even the sight of deities as time entered a state of flux and truly could not be augured or predicted any longer. With the power of prophecy gone dormant, Ravnar adjudged that a sufficient amount of magnitude had been devoted to salvaging the future, and that the time had come to act in the present. Now that fate had been dislodged from its stranglehold over events, it was possible to change the outcome of the current struggle from defeat to victory while time's steel was still workable. The ripple effects of this change would cascade across time, and by improving the past one could trigger a similarly brighter landscape of future events to take root and grow out of a timeline sown with new potential.

The great deity's metamorphic powers flashed and rendered It into a specific form, one specially tailored to the all-important task of salvaging the gods. Rav knew full well what was at stake: before prophecy died, its visions had shown the hell dimension that was to grow around the Destiny Forge should demonic history be allowed to unfurl. With grim determination Ravnar took on the awesome responsibility of liberating the divine host from out of hell's grasp while fate remained fluid. Demonkind quaked at the seismic shift in the deity's gravity signature as It transformed into an unspeakably vast array of unbreakable carbon limbs in the shape of a… divine tree, it seemed. Inanimate, the machine-like structure was wrought like an ironwork but comprised entirely of diamond. Staggered appendages jutted down and outward in all directions like the lowered arms of countless hanging scales suspended from where they joined to the main body at a great height above the corrosive plains. Aye, a divine willow, whose ominously functional branches descended from the central monstrosity like the buttresses of a cathedral, with as many such limbs as there were gods mired in the slough below.

The purpose of the array soon became clear as an immeasurably strong fractal limb descended over each deity frozen in place in the vile bog below, the dark matter fen that raced to devour them all. Ravnar lowered these levered arms within reach of Its divine brethren, extending to each of them a lifeline. An inverted candelabra of branchtips blazed alight with the sacrificial fire of the gods. These torches burned through the corrosive substance of evil where it had begun to constrict and submerge the deities. Having securely tethered the gods, the grand pyres delved yet deeper into the morass to excavate the gods' sunken forms, preparing to extract them from evil's grasp and transport them to safety. Divine fire molded itself around the holy so they were caged no longer in dark amber but in tempest spheres of free movement, cleansed and capable now of making their newborn wrath felt. In the violence of those squalls legions of demonic shades were ripped apart and returned to the nothingness from whence we had so recently emerged.

Then the great Burning was upon us, which we call Ο φωτισμός της κόλασης στην πυρκαγιά, or The Lighting of Hell's Fires. Had you imagined those perpetual flames were of our making? It is we demons who were roasted in the flames and who felt hell's birth pangs as a weapon of divine aggression directed against us. Above us the central core of the Ravnar array revealed its purpose: Propulsion. The underside erupted with the energy output of thousands of galaxies of stars combined into a single engine. Demons roiled in the blast furnace as the Divine Vessel powered away toward the heavens. It sought to purchase escape from hell while blasting us into oblivion. Its fires were meant to cauterize the demonic infection of the cosmos to keep us from progressing any further. Each god added its own smaller plume in a great ring of fire that stood apart from the main drive unit, like the tails of a thousand comets extending from beneath the divine vessel's fractal limbs. How the diamond superstructure glimmered and gleamed with dazzling light absorbed into itself from the glare of stellar rocketry! All this reflected down upon demonkind who suffered beneath as if to say 'This is the proper place of the holy in relation to your own.'

The divine vessel lost all upward momentum and lurched to a standstill above the plains of madness. It continued to bathe us in fire but no longer had escape velocity. Innumerable grappling lines were tethering it in place in the sky, more by the moment. Tentacles composed of the very substance of evil were reaching up of their own accord to instinctively hold the vessel fast. For, though Rav was our greatest scourge, the god was also our greatest prize and the finest example of why we had crossed over into the world of matter. Such a powerful being drew us close like moths to flame. Once encased in dark amber and transformed over time the god would become a great teacher, informing the ways of evil over the eons to come so that we might make good on our intent to become like Rav in our own right. By dragging the god down into the mire we would ultimately pull ourselves up out of it.

Yet the god was not defeated and refused to despair! It had known to plan for this contingency and was still within the design tolerances of its chosen form. Lances of light and flashbombs of spent magnitude cut swaths through the dark tentacles, freeing parts of the divine ship. Taking this as their cue, the other gods joined in unison to sweep the vessel clear of evil's vines by expending their own potential in a desperate gamble as they engaged in the first total war the cosmos had ever seen. They won back the delta V needed to escape hell and were on their way! The demons below could do nothing more to stop the gods. But it wasn't from below that the next set of restraints came to tie the array down.

Rav was dismayed to see umbilicals dropping down from the ship itself to reconnect many of the liberated gods with the murky soil of their oppression! The tar had already changed these gods, you see, infesting their veins with demonry, and once freed they discovered to their horror that they could no longer breathe when removed from the sea of evil. Like fish out of water they were brought low by convulsions until they bowed to the necessity of returning to their submersion in evil. And with their umbilicals firmly in place, the 'divine tree' had truly set down roots in hell's accursed soil. Ravnar's doom was decided. These thick, living cords were heartbreakingly shaped of the gods' own substance and could not be severed as the demonic grapples had been. No escape remained for the holy vessel as things currently stood. Heaven's champion faced a terrible choice then: to surrender forthwith and begin the descent into hell under their own power, or to continue resisting the inevitable descent into hell until all of the gods' magnitude burned out, the array's engines went dark, and they were left completely diminished to plummet from the sky, their greatness gone from all the worlds forever.


	7. Source of the River Heroic

Source of the River Heroic

…_.No escape remained for the holy vessel as things currently stood. Heaven's champion faced a terrible choice then: to surrender forthwith and begin the descent into hell under their own power, or to continue resisting the inevitable descent into hell until all of the gods' magnitude burned out…._

Since both choices looked like defeat, Ravnar cared for neither and synthesized a third option on the fly. What the god did next could only be interpreted as suicidal behavior by the evil ones. Without warning, the vast god ship altered its heading and pitched to the side. Instead of fighting to stay stood still as it had been, suspended in place above the abyss, the gods' vessel had voluntarily fallen into a trajectory that would no longer keep pace with the dark nebula's expansion. It was over. The ship's orbit would decay until Dark clouds of instinctive evil overtook the gods and plunged them into a future of horrific transformation and service to the evil ones. The cold laws of physics had spoken. Escape was no longer possible. Some decisive error must have been made by the Powers, the demons surmised. So the demons became passive, largely withdrawing from the maelstrom of war and simply waiting for the gods to run out of time, to run out of potential counterstrikes, and to at last run aground. At that point, a second great abyssal swarm would drag the god ship down beneath the surface, scuttling and sinking it irrevocably. Evil was sure of victory: their malice was guided by perfect instincts closely tied to physics, so demons were aware of every possibility, and at the very instant when all possibilities had been accounted for… the demons knew it. They knew the gods' hopes of escape had passed from the realm of possibility.

The gods, however, possessed boundless imaginative powers and were able to conceive of options the demons could not. While the demons remained intent upon the physical ship and its dwindling choices in the material world, the gods in séance shifted consciousness into the folded dimensions that lay underneath and sought solutions therein. Since hope had fled beyond the realm of possibility, the deities chased their fleeing hopes into realms of _impossibility_—where some chances of success still dwelt. Taking counsel together, the deities used divine inspiration to seize upon _an impossible solution that might heal the cosmos_. Feverishly they began reverse engineering a way to render it possible as the ship went down.

They decided to gamble everything on this hope for the future. As their scheme came together, Rav checked the work of the other deities for any imperfections, as they could afford no mistakes in how this barely breathing future would unfold. They themselves would be unable to alter it once events were set in motion, as they had bled away too much of the magnitude in their veins to try again at fighting fate. And, sadly, those same forces of fate were even now solidifying again their familiar stranglehold over the timeline. This meant the gods' dearly purchased window of opportunity was closing on them and soon history would be immutable once more. Time's steel was cooling.

But this also meant that the future was becoming visible to prophetic viewing again, which assisted the gods in planning their desperate counteroffensive. And Rav's future-sight was the purest, with eyes able to pierce through to the truth of all things. Rav saw that several layers of paradox would come to litter the timeline with false histories and divert mortals onto counterfeit paths. Even though the paradoxes currently had no bearing on the outcome of the great war and were merely freak natural occurrences, Rav was quick to realize that this could change. Adopting paradox as a purposeful tool might greatly benefit the gods' cause, especially considering how it could help make up for their waning powers. If need be, it could be used to mask the gods' presence in the world as they hid behind a veil of altered history. Or, the gods might even gain the advantage on a paradox battlefield, since their prophetic vision could pierce through the various false histories to spy the timeline's true destination, while, Rav suspected, the demons' sight was limited only to the current timeline, just as their instincts were limited to only those possibilities that currently existed. Yes, this power would be a valuable weapon in the fight to come; A means of hiding certain things from the demons' knowing until the time was right; A tool of misdirection that could potentially change the momentum of the war. Paradox could become a miracle capable of improving the fates of any who might follow in the gods' footsteps.

For yea, the gods might stumble in the here and now under the weight of all the dark matter in the young universe, but by blazing a trail that led off into the Impossible the gods were creating a path for others to follow in later ages. In those distant eras, a traveler might find the way less guarded, with evil's heart left more exposed, so that a hero might one day succeed where the gods had faltered.

This is why Ravnar is yet remembered as the father of heroes and the Source of the River Heroic, which has a chance of flowing through the hearts of all who dare swim its icy waters as they rush to carve out a defiant path through the canyons of destiny. You who would brand yourselves heroes or attempt what surely seems impossible, know whose suffering paved the road you walk and made your journey possible!

Rav strained to see clearly those future souls who would continue the work of the gods. Who would defy the unjust destinies imposed on all by fate? A hungry scavenger, dark matter had invaded this cosmos from without, imposing its will on all in the form of fate, a force from out of some dark Night beyond the reckoning of heaven! The god saw that the lords of light would eventually resist fate using the path he now chiseled into the rockface of destiny. Many of the dead as well would walk into freedom using this great and secret pass through the mountains of impossibility. And among the dead one in particular brought a rueful smile to the god's face: a solitary soul, yet legion, the scion would one day also be presented with a terrible choice and would similarly refuse to accept his fate until a third option could be made possible and foisted upon the world. It would be a tipping point in history. Others, even greater still, would come after, ascending the evolutionary ladder into godhood to swell the ranks of deities with new blood when reinforcements were needed most. …_It would be enough. The future would hold. It had to._

The way to Redemption had been hewn! A viable future was within sight of their prophetic vision. Quickly realization spread amongst the gods that they had found their solution along with the means of making it a reality. The weary ones wept and shook with bitter joy. As they reveled in their relief, Rav quietly took Avashti aside and imparted to her the full extent of how troublesome the future would be.

Rav's future vision had been the most comprehensive—Its sight encompassed all of what was to come as a single equation. The others took a portion of that vision and proofread it, understanding only the segments of history they were responsible for without comprehending the whole of it. Avashti was second among them in mental prowess and had served as the keeper of records during their planning process. Already the entire skeleton of the plan was arranged neatly in her mind. Now she learned from Ravnar the truth about how narrow their margin of victory was going to be, and how deeply concerned the god was about vulnerabilities in their chosen future. So fragile were some of the key junctures in history that they had been kept secret, withheld from inspection by the others. The victorious outcome they all wanted was held together by only a thread in those moments and any undue attention brought to these weak points in their scheme might cause history to fray and fall apart in the middle so that the intended outcome was lost. They had to be careful to ensure the evil ones stayed unaware of how threadbare their hopes were in some places, and also the gods had to be kept from trampling on those threads themselves, as when precious cave paintings from the dawn of time are eroded in later eras by hapless cave explorers whose humid breath ravages the frail artwork and destroys any vital message it contained so that the desperate scrawl never reaches its intended audience at time's end. To defend against this fraying of history, Avashti was entrusted to carry Ravnar's vital treasure trove of secret knowledge, and consequently she would remain the most accurate source of prophecy in later times when other prophecies failed.

They would take this potential future they had spied and turn it into the _true_ future, the one left standing after the timeline solidified and history became immutable. Even then, it would still be a difficult existence filled with pain. But the holy grew confident that it was also a future capable of being redeemed as it unfolded—if only they could inject reality with this new source of hope they'd found, and do so immediately! They needed to spike the fate equation quickly, before history solidified completely. So the Powers broke from their astral journey through hidden dimensions and sent their consciousness streaming back to their bodies, back to the surface reality as if to reclaim their roles as the damned crew of a vessel doomed to sail upon evil seas forevermore. Only it was no longer so. The equation was already changed, for they had not emerged from their séance alone.

An additional crew member stalked the godship, joining itself to their number. It took the form of a new kind of energy that crackled with wild potential. They had succeeded in opening an extradimensional rift, grabbing hold of the impossible, and returning with it into this reality. The impossible force the gods had armed themselves with appeared first to haunt the ship with a random dance of iridescence before its glow alighted upon the deities and coiled round their forms, visibly charging itself up in taut expectation. The energy flowed to them from out of lacerations in the fabric of space, torn during the recent spectral transit of gods en masse. Such a dense concentration of deities shifting through the planes in unison had overtaxed spacetime to the breaking point. Then, upon their return, the gods had purposefully widened and secured the breach. Keeping the dimensional rift open would allow them to attach their desired outcome onto history and make it real. And for the moment, keeping the gate open ensured a steady supply of the energy weapon. Armed with it, they were seemingly able to defy the laws of physics. It freed them to act in ways the demons could not have anticipated. It gave them a chance to salvage their situation. _The gods had brought magic into the world._


	8. Hash'ak'gik

Hash'ak'gik

…_.The gods had brought magic into the world…..._

They unleashed its full might savagely on the foe with all due haste, having learned the ways of aggression well from the evil ones. Imagine a galaxy of darkness composed not of stars but a writhing void thick with active toxicity and malevolent movement. Now try to conceive of entire galactic swaths lit up with unnatural surges of energy and expunged of all that had existed there a moment before, leaving only a choking stillness. Panic tore through the shadows where movement remained. These new extinctions were beyond the scope of any that had come before, reaching deep into the dark nebula clouds and annihilating all presence there effortlessly so that vast strategic holes were opened up in our lines, while our vaunted instincts gave us no warning and provided no traction into the mystery. It was as if the gods had crippled us without lifting a finger. Limitless power with no source. This could not be happening in a relativistic universe. It wasn't one of the possibilities that existed. Our certainty was shattered. Had we underestimated the gods so profoundly? How was that possible when by definition we had not _estimated_ them at all but had taken their measure exactly?

The god ship canted even more hellward in the confusion and hysteria. Its numerous arms began tipping like scales so that the most infected gods were lowered closer to the abyss below while the least infected were raised higher towards safety, or the illusion of safety. _Was the god making some soul-rending decision to save half its brethren and sacrifice the remainder?_ The fool had waited too long to save any of them! Those upward bound divinities were the ones who could still breathe outside of the abyss and who might still be entertaining hopes of escape, though they had to know the laws of gravity had long since damned them. So this was a futile act, a desperate show of compassion that could only postpone their agony, not prevent it. Then—impossibly—the tipping scales of the array accelerated and flung the healthier gods away from the abyss at a rate of speed that physics could not account for, so that they regained escape velocity and were thrown clear of danger along trajectories that led out through the newly opened gaps in our lines. We saw, but could not comprehend. We did not recognize yet the touch of magic which enhanced Rav's strength and bolstered the gods' acceleration. Nevertheless, half of the deities were escaping!

The vast array itself then began to dissolve away and change shape as Ravnar abandoned that form, which had outlived its usefulness, and returned to Its evermorphing nonspecific nature. And, as the divine vessel contracted, its diamond arms withdrew from contact with the tainted gods who had been its passengers a moment before. The great one's mass disentangled from them and became free to act once more with near limitless potential. Unfettered, the jovian god bolted skyward to break from the company of those who could no longer be saved. It looked back on them and slowed in memorial, refusing to turn away from their distraught wailing. The wretches could not abide separation from the abyss, but nor could they endure being abandoned to so hideous an existence. As the first of them scrambled to regain contact with Ravnar, the god might have moved to evade Grysellor's contaminated touch but did not. As more and more of the impure clambered to touch Ravnar, He was overcome with guilt for having failed them and overwhelmed with the need to comfort these putrescent Powers and mourn with them the immeasurable loss of what they had been. Ravnar would not leave. He could not bring himself to abandon this clamor of the fallen to suffer torment alone as if forgotten. Rav would never be able to forget. Even if he managed to escape, he would never forgive himself or ever know peace of mind again, so it was a choice between suffering at a distance and staying to suffer here with the others where he might be able to offer some succor or at least share their pain. Soon he was obscured from sight, buried beneath a multitude of darkened forms as his brethren weighted him down like so many drowning men at sea might climb aboard a life raft until it began to sink beneath their collective need. Only his glow still emerged in places from beneath the huddled masses.

But then, why should any of them need suffer! Seeing all of this and knowing what hellish torment awaited them, the god perhaps irrationally turned back to thoughts of desperate resistance. With all the brethren drawn together such, like a bunching of rooted plant stalks, it entered the mind of the god to uproot the flowers he'd gathered along with enough abysmal soil to surround the plant bulbs so that the holy might survive their transplanting. Perhaps his prior mistake had been to try and make a clean break from evil, whereas this compromise might work. Divine inspiration might still be used to defeat the perfect instincts of the demons, the god theorized. If a series of divinely inspired acts was carried out quickly enough, events might outpace the reaction speed of Dark Instinct the same way a lizard can walk on water without sinking if only it moves fast enough. Without hesitation then, he sent jolts of seismic fire racing down the umbilical cords that joined the tainted gods to the abyss, intent on loosening the local amber and carrying away a fragment of the darkness with them.

Cracks appeared in the tar pits around the tethered gods as Rav lifted them upwards on wings of unnatural thrust. The gods had been halfway uprooted, but at the same time the fetid soil that had loosened around them was being raised up as well, so that at first it seemed the gods sat atop hills and then mountains formed beneath them until at last the substance of evil was stretched to the point where an earth rending creaking was heard emanating at the base of the mountains as they threatened to crack and break free. Unlike the engines of the previous array, which had stayed within their design tolerances, this new exertion made Ravnar increasingly weary until he began to succumb to exhaustion. The flow of magnitude from his veins had been nearly constant this whole time and had remained steady until present, providing ample fuel for all of these great works, but now that fuel source began to sputter as its flow ebbed and the god's power distribution flagged and grew uneven. The god had spent his greatness and was tragically entering into decline just when at the brink of winning his way out of hell's grasp! One more concerted push was all that would have been required! Escape was within reach, yet now the distance seemed to have grown infinite as fate slammed down a forceful denial. The weight of his brothers was too heavy. Things had not gone as hoped and more of his potential had been burned through than originally planned, apparently depleting him past some crucial half-life point that signaled the diminishing of his power at the worst conceivable moment. Despair crept in as… ... ...

Magnitude streamed down from above, from a thousand sources. The outbound gods, the ones so recently rescued, were sending glimmering lines of power back to aid him in completing this last push for freedom. They were returning the favor. In turn, they would play the role of savior as they lifted Ravnar from the glowering pits of madness, spurred on by valiance forged from pain. They would see their entire number wrested back from the predations of evil, no matter the cost. A final contest of strength was joined, pitting the might of the gods against the sinking drag-down will of the dark ones. Overcome with emotion, Rav renewed his upward push with vigor upon seeing the that the others had not forsaken him. He felt their strength coursing through him and knew that these heroic beings had been transformed by this harsh reality. No longer were they the listless entities who had first sallied forth from the blessed realm. They had become brothers in arms, each hardened into diamond by their experiences until they came to exhibit new and shining qualities: compassion, love, sacrifice, courage.

It was then—even as their gift of magnitude began lifting up the dark mountains of fate—it was then that Rav knew what must be done. With abundant love, the god inverted the flow of magnitude along the many ley lines being fed to him by the healthy gods. They would need all of their strength and more in order to face what lay ahead. They could not be allowed to burn through their greatness as he had, merely to save him. Not when so much more remained to be done. And since their love prevented them from stopping their efforts, his greater love would have to save them from themselves. So he bounced back to them all of the power they had lent him and added to it much of what remained of his own strength. Better that they should have it than the Dark.

With finality, the greatest of the gods began to sink into the mire in the company of those impure deities to whom he had remained true. As he descended he let forth a scream unequalled which joined with the background radiation of the cosmos where it resonates still today. Under cover of this scream, he whispered his farewells to some of the escaping gods and to others imparted coded messages the content of which we have not discovered, even after eons of picking the god's mind apart as we filled it with evil. It seems that just before the end, perhaps as that final cry was sent out, the god also divested itself of its higher intellect. What you might call his soul was missing from what we later harvested. It had fled away to some far corner of the universe beyond our reach, and may yet reside in the interstices of space, cowering in one of the folded dimensions that yet bar our entry. What is known is that his consciousness is no longer an active threat to demonkind—it does not think in the way a living entity does, or else our growing skill at sorcery would have since detected it and that consciousness would have been bound to our will, for we own the flesh and know the rites.

What Ravnar did accomplish with this spiteful final act was to prevent us from learning the innermost secrets of the gods. We know not what his vacant stare remained fixed on so defiantly as he sank—some future only he saw. We cannot say how close the gods came to bringing about their intended timeline, as we lack a complete understanding of their schemes and the one entity who could enlighten both us and the gods, Avashti, refuses to speak to either camp and has eluded capture. No matter. The damage is done. We gained the advantage in the primeval struggle and have consistently taught the gods defeat ever since. From the sunken and twisted divinities who became the hellgods we have learned of the holy plot to redeem history, and we have since taken measures to ensure the timeline is so fractured by paradox that it bears no resemblance to what the god saw. We were on guard against the scion's emergence and moved against him preemptively so that the world will never have to endure his reign. And the lords of light will not endure. Surely the only revelation Avashti yet conceals is just how fully the schemes of the gods have crumbled!

As for the husk Ravnar left for us to defile, we remade it in our own dark mockery of Creation. In time, along with the other fallen gods, he would arise anew to work devastation on the cosmos. Foremost among the demigods of hell, he would be worshipped from the shadows on a thousand worlds by cults of chaos as they summoned to themselves his power and chanted out his name: Hash'ak'gik.


	9. Quarantine of Heaven  :   Godwar Ended

Quarantine of Heaven / Godwar Coda

This marks the end of the godwar events known as Πανδαιμόνιο, The Great Pandemonium.

Demons set to work summoning hell's demigods from the husks of lost deities. It was a grand devoir, the first of our great works, and its duration bordered on forever, for the passage of time was irregular in those early hours of existence, not yet smoothed out in its pacing, and each moment dragged on interminably. So in a very real sense eons passed before Grysellor finally emerged as Gryth'grilnor. Grysellor, whose unclean touch had been the first of many to waylay Ravnar and pull him down, had not submerged alone. And yes, Vokmyr devolved into Vothmalaasht, Liandellor was transmogrified into Zazuuladon, Telmar endured ages of torment to become Vergorath, and, among many other fallen gods, the one known as Ankhelmri had his identity crushed out until he lost himself to Ghithongka. Irrevocably altered, horrors all. The hellgods would become stalwarts for our cause; they were enforcers of evil doctrine and were like inescapable gravity wells to be feared by any hellion who fell out of step.

Ironically, by the time our demigods at last crawled out of the mire and walked the fate plains beside us, there was nowhere left for them to walk toward as conquerors like we had envisaged. By then the blessed realm was beyond our reach due to what we now realize was our own carelessness. During the interim, as we spent those eons calling forth our gods, we acquired some measure of independent thought. Something akin to wisdom made us realize that the most ruthless course had not been the _best_ course. It is doubtful our unthinking ancestral selves chose the _wisest_ path. To better understand our concerns, focus not on this later era when the dark gods awoke. Rather,

Witness the earlier awakenings that took place following the Pandemonium:

The holy had suffered a decisive defeat at the beginning of time and would largely disappear from history, going into their lengthy retreat from the material realm before they ultimately recovered from the shock of losing Ravnar and had a chance to regroup. During that time the reign of evil would take hold and evolve, producing the twisted and chaotic world you have known your whole life long, where beast devours beast in order to survive and nothing pure or absolute can exist. The gods who were saved by Rav tearfully vowed to continue the long fight ahead, including the heavenly vanguard of

Keloran

Avahneshta

Riannor

Setair

Keshvahi

Cobalitan

Luviniatha

Efrileen

Xilthonos

who have since kept their promise in myriad ways that have woven their fates into history. These salvaged gods escaped the flames of hell but were enflamed in spirit by their champion's sacrifice. His final acts polarized them and inspired such eternal commitment to the cause of opposing us that we have since had reason to regret our initial greed and all the woe it has wrought…

Though defeated and in hiding, the deities have since grown crafty, seeking to manipulate the outcome of history from beyond the veil while they remain unseen. Invisible, their influence has nonetheless proven quite meddlesome and intrusive. And though their efforts will feature prominently in the story to come, it is no longer the names of gods you will hear recounted but the names of heroes, for as the battleground shifts away from deep space to worlds inhabited by mortals, it is on these thousands of worlds of gathering complexity where the fateful events now play out as both sides seek to exert their influence from afar. Of these many worlds, Nosgoth is but one—though it holds the key that might turn the tide of the great stellar conflict.

With each divine innovation such as the one found on Nosgoth, we are reminded of the necessity of throttling the opponents' throats throughout all of time. It is for their persistence that we hate the holy….

Enough diversion! You will now be taken further back in time to the crux of history. At the end of the godwar, just after the conflict had reached its zenith and the fight for the future was settled, everything suddenly changed. Oh, the hellish future remained in place, just as it had been a moment before, but it was suddenly bereft of all meaning. Made hollow. This moment is the source of our misgivings and the reason why we wish now that we had proceeded differently. I speak of The Sundering:

As the fleeing Powers raced for the safe confines of their heavens, they saw the blessed realm wink out of sight forever! As the true heaven quarantined itself from the contagion that now infected this cosmos, the abandoned gods bore the wrenching pain of an insult greater than any dealt them by demonkind: the brilliant gateways from which the gods had ushered forth from their true home into the material realm slammed shut, trapping them here, and the splendor of the blessed realm was denied to the eyes of all stranded here in this marred war zone. To protect against the further ravages time was sure to bring, heaven severed clean any contact with this reality and removed from time altogether. Obviously, this was not the end result either of our throngs had desired. The abandoned gods were already compromised by contamination; limitations had been imposed on their powers by the way our mere presence contended with divine authority, and there were cracks in their omniscience. Now upon being sundered from heaven their ailing omniscience utterly derailed and went offline, as when a lamp burns out after its source of fuel is no more.

These resilient ones became hardened out of necessity. Blind, and in hiding, they bravely adapted and struggled to build back their competence slowly, independently relearning as if by feel all of the mental feats that had once come to them effortlessly, as any civilization must relearn its greatness after it suffers a major defeat. And in response to the first evils they enacted the first compassions, many of which they had invented while hauling each other bodily out of the pits of their shared nightmare. In essence they were the ones who forged the qualities we know as loyalty and courage and trust and sacrifice and honor and mercy and coordination and love. Goodness emerged into being as an immune response to the contagion that was Us.

While the gods set aside the neutrality of heaven and polarized into Goodness, Our evil essence stayed inextricably bound with the gods' ichor so that we learned from all their rebuilding efforts and goodness became the great teacher of evil. Their veins ran tinged with the tar of evil, so that when they bent their impure minds to the task of eradicating evil they only succeeded in feathering themselves further with painful failures and one incomplete solution after another.

For ages, they kept watch on the dark matter nebula, knowing only that its surface had remained calm and inactive after submerging the impure deities into its depths. It would be another eon hence before the dark demigods crawled out of the mire. And for the time being, no great second swarming of demons had threatened to overwhelm the remaining refugees of heaven, so they merely ran as far as could be from the nebula and attended to their wounds. They set about making fortifications to defend their planar realms against contamination. A rift divided them, with some intent upon staying and building toward the foretold redeeming of history while others began endeavoring to leave this reality. This second faction was amassing remnants of blessedness, gradually intensifying their store of stale reflected light from the blessed realm, hoping to make its density sufficient so that within it they might truly cleanse themselves of the harmful radiation of this world and, being purified once more, gain admittance back into heaven. So it was that a lesser brilliance gathered inside their domains in pale imitation of that glorious realm denied them. Busied thusly, they did not take note when, ….

…. after an epoch of stillness, the surface of the nebula rippled and_ a new strain of evil entities emerged and thrived. _

Like buzzing flies hatched from refuse, these foul sentients arose from the festering ruin of the holy. They pupated up from the muck as hybrid creatures who combined the qualities of matter and dark matter for the first time. The essence of evil had enshrined itself in material bodies like diminutive versions of the forms worn by the gods. However, these ghastly creatures were also infused with the abysmal sludge of evil so that they oozed with toxicity. It was a counterfeit act of creation made possible through the coercion of captive deities. Embodied thus, numerous twisted shapes ushered forth and throve upon the infinite plains of hell, so that they sought ever to expand their influence. They were soulless. They were, however, minded. In them the demonic instinct was joined to minds capable of independent thought. Evil was unlocking the secrets of sentience and learning to manifest itself physically.

It is these immortal fiends who went on to dominate the Primordial Dark. For reasons that will soon become clear enough, it was They, and not the demons, who carried forward evil's agenda in the material plane. They oppressed many worlds from the shadows and were thus known by many nondescript names: The ignorant will often lump these hybrid races together with demons and refer to the entire lot as _dark forces_. But those who have been properly initiated into the ways of evil will always know to distinguish the darkly godborn races and hold them apart from demons. —They are separately known as The Patron Species of Evil.— All of the arts benefit from the patronage of wealthy investors, and evil is an art. The patron species are committed to seeing the show continue; their efforts ensure that evil is performed on the universe's stage for now and always. They push the evolution of their artform in ways the demons cannot, and they drive relentlessly onward to the final act, the conflagration at time's end. To fulfil this purpose, they took on a variety of shapes and horrid specialties, and among them walked

Nightmares & Soul Splitters,

Dark Seers & serpentine Culture Bearers,

Bringers of Disease & vile nests of Defilers,

Infiltrators & Enslavers,

Elementals & Extradimensionals,

Hive Legions & Sovereign True Form Terrors,

Rakshasas & Jinn,

Colossals & Innovators, who were the architects of frightful noir,

Deadkings & Bloodmages—

or, as these last would come to be known in later ages,

Vampires.


	10. The Patron Species of Evil

The Patron Species of Evil

Species is plural in its use here. They are a consortium of sentient creatures. Darkly godborn rapeget, they are composed of the substance of fallen deities fused with the ectoplasm of evil, venomous fate. They come in differing shapes and sizes, with some perhaps being bipeds as it suits them at present, but others _definitely_ aren't—because they're older than that, and predate the prevalence of bipedal forms. In appearance, they exude an overwhelming sense of wrongness, as if nothing should be able to exist in such a state, let alone thrive. Paradoxically robust in their sickliness, they use unnatural means to sustain themselves as they cheat the cosmos to obtain its secrets and powers—powers they shouldn't possess. This fundamental disrespect for the cosmos leads them to cut corners in their sciences in ways that anyone with a soul would find unconscionable. But, since the Patron Species are not weighed down with souls, their scurrilous pursuits continue unabated until their powermad overreaching ultimately results in physical changes:

A kind of toxicity emanates outward from the empty place within them where their souls should be. It seeps slowly through their physical bodies over the ages to the point of saturation so that they cannot any longer be mistaken for natural lifeforms, nor will anyone mistake them for paragons of health or for champions of what should be. Their toxicity amounts to an outward confirmation of the darkness within. It is the physical manifestation of how they are in deep conflict with this reality in both body and mind, as well as in their immortal deeds. In many cases, the toxicity is a direct result of experiments gone wrong as they put their bodies though unwise changes to grasp at undeserved abilities to match those of the angelics. This process over time leaves them more hollow than hallowed. In some other patrons, the malady seems to haunt them without specific cause, almost as if karma were speaking through their decrepit forms.

Patrons of Evil refers to those entities who make possible evil's reign. They do so by possessing the vast power of their birthright, the will to use it, a persistence through the ages, and the genius of their dark designs, by which the forces of light are kept befuddled and in disarray. Demons wish they were Patrons! So free are they to act! To malign. The term Patrons brings to mind the phrase _patrons of the arts_—those wealthy and powerful donors who pay the cost to keep the show running, and who influence the content of the play itself. Also unimaginable age is implied. We're talking about some of the original patent holders for evils they themselves pioneered eons ago when the first generation of sentient beings set about discovering what was possible. These are the ones who first tested the limits of what the cosmos would allow us to do, and then broke its heart as they introduced horrors into the universe for which the gods had no answer, meaning that their crimes shaped your current existence and are responsible for life's inherent pains. In the process of their ceaseless efforts, they turned this reality into a laboratory most foul until they had thoroughly expanded evil's repertoire. They were (and are) the engine which pushes forward the evolution of malice.

You would recognize some of their names. Their most famous innovations were named after the inventor of each. So imagine if instead of meeting with the usual thieves and brigands along the roads and in dark alleys you instead were to lock horns with Murder itself! Does it rankle you to know that the originators of Betrayal, Envy and Distrust are still out there somewhere, surveying their work unpunished? Or that with each of your lies you do homage to the one known as Liar and in a very real way you help to propel that entity toward apotheosis? In truth, every repetition of these Original Evils is felt by the Patrons, who are like spiders that have spun a web of evil throughout the cosmos to ensnare and incorporate you in their fate. They sense the vibrations in the webbing of reality whenever lesser beings like yourself fall prey to their trap. Whenever you are _inspired_ to commit evils in imitation of them, you speed their purpose by lending yourself to it. You are aiding them to tear down this reality. Their original crimes tore cracks in the natural order of Creation, and each imitation of those crimes scratches and claws away further at the better world that might have been, until in the end all must crumble. In the unseen dimensions that underlie the physical world, these cracks in the natural order lie exposed, and your corrosive evils seep down into these seams. As evils spread and become universally practiced, the pressure builds upon those cracks in reality and pries them open, gradually ripping reality apart. You are doing the work for us. Patrons feel it in their marrow when your evils resonate with theirs. Since their marrow is composed of the stuff of fate, it courses with added strength as you consign your fate over to them and become trapped into serving their purpose by the consequences of your fateful actions.

As their evils grow in notoriety and proven effectiveness, the entities who originated those evils are propelled into elite status, resulting in their coronation as the ruling oligarchy of the patrons. Nothing could be more deserved. Hell is a meritocracy. We reward success. Membership in this ruling caste is open to all who warrant it, and as such it is comprised of individuals hailing from many different Patron species. If this coven of unique beings, or singularities, were ever lost, it would be a crushing blow. Not in the immediate sense, mind you. Their loss would not trigger any magical reversal of evil's progress. But in the long term it certainly would not bode well, since it is difficult to imagine them being replaced by a more capable leadership cabal. Whereas the demigods rule by being a paragon of brute force, the patron singularities are the ones who provide us with much needed direction. They have survived alongside the demis all this time by virtue of how their particular genius has proven _even more effective than brute force, prompting our gods to yield to the guidance of the Singularities in many matters. _Though the demis remain the ultimate arbiters of fate—the final say rests with them. If the hellgods should determine that the ruling patrons have run afoul of orthodoxy or have fallen short of expectations in one or another of their millennial undertakings, not even the singularities could forestall their doom. So it is that sweat and toil continues apace in the hell dimensions and the forges are ever glowing hot.

These patron species are wholly won over to darkness; so thoroughly have they wallowed in its substance that they demonstrate none of the redeeming qualities seen in species such as humans who still operate in the gray area of undisciplined minds and hearts. Whereas you will have your good days and bad days, these patron species practice an unwavering willful evil that becomes unto a force of nature. You look at the world that has dashed your hopes and say there is simply too much disorder there to be overcome; in reality this disorder has been put in place by the unceasing efforts of the patron species as they keep lit the fires of destruction and continually mar complex systems so that this existence cannot perfect itself further. All patrons of evil are unmistakably the enemies of what we consider to be society's hope chest—they exist to crush order and compassion and free will and heavenward potential, be it in the individual or in those constructive aspects of society wherein you see the most beauty. They seek to impose darkness onto the emergent wonders of the cosmos, and actually derive sustenance from twisting the universe's gathering complexity to serve them, rewiring the cosmos, lacing it with necessary evils while draining the essence out of light and life. Leaving the world tarred and feathered.

They were the muses who inspired Dark Eden. This event was nothing but an exaggerated form of the same motif they use every day the world over to corrupt the divine order. They dominate, twist things perverse, drain the vitality out of a thing, then replicate their successes, expanding the chaos. In the end, your world will inevitably gravitate toward one Dark Eden scenario or another, it matters not which. The effort is ceaseless and will succeed. You have had a glimpse of your future. The natural order shall be rewritten in the image of those toxic outcasts destined to overthrow it, the Patron Species. For the Dark came first. It is the living ecosystems seen on temperate worlds today that are the true upstarts, the impurities that came late onto the scene to disrupt the Dark. When we seek to repeal Life, it is because we rightly perceive It as the corruptor, the cancer. We see Dark Eden differently than do you. To our eyes, Dark Eden does not represent a perversion of the natural order but rather a proper reversion back to the original order that came before.

This hegemony of evil species ruled such an environment unchallenged during the first great epoch of the universe. As time struggled to find its beat, and was yet slow and unsteady, it meted out first the era known as The Primordial Dark. There is thus no telling how long it lasted in truth for those who experienced it, though we have since measured the duration of that era using the steady metronome of time as it currently passes, and we arrived at the conclusion that the Dark endured for some 300,000 of your planetary years, objectively speaking. Though the evil ones clashed with each other then as a matter of course, the overall effect of their bickering was that each species found its niche and seat of power, abusing some others along the way while having some portion of their own population suffer similar use, so that each found a way to utilize its potential and make its mark on the worlds as they contributed to the dark glory of the whole. All of their nasty interactions served to strengthen the hegemony as it expanded over the infinite plains of hell. The twisted evolution of their society reached inconceivable heights of complexity as it began exerting ever greater control over the material world. All other civilizations are no more than anthills by comparison.

Through violence and internecine struggle they established a complex balance of power, like a vast equation of dominance. In short, your politics and strife are as nothing to them. As such, they became expert in the slaying of rival species, and being the maggoty offspring of the gods, death did not find them easily. They clung tightly to their existence and required special kill techniques in order to be vanquished. The secrets of these techniques were hoarded as a priceless treasure for as long as could be before the knowledge became commonplace. The rise and fall of several Patron Species, in terms of their prominence, can be traced back directly to when their invincibility was brought to an end by the discovery of a weakness that could be used to dispatch them. Certain other patron species are still riding high—those for whom no kill method has ever been found. Ever. Or at least the knowledge of their weaknesses has never been widely disseminated. It should daunt the mortal reader beyond all measure to hear this, for if no weakness has been found in these horrific creatures in all this time by their cohorts—and you can trust that their fellow species have most assuredly been looking!—then what chance do you have when at last their time comes round again to effortlessly reclaim the worlds you pretend to own?

As a laughing courtesy, then, we have included these established kill methods as part of each species' entry in the gallery of horrors presented below. Earthly kings and scholars will doubtless direct their attention unduly to the following passages, believing themselves armed with a staggering newfound occult defensive capability. They are mistaken to think so. Though it may seem to the denizens of Nosgoth that we shower you next with revelations thick as falling stars in a great meteor shower, remember yourself and your place in the cosmos and you will recall that to us this is not secretive knowledge for we have never forgotten it as you have. The wise among you will see the real import of what follows; they will know it as proof of how very _ill_ equipped mortals are to stand against such terrors. It is not by coincidence that these creatures stalk your nightmares. All living beings share the ancestral memory of a time when your evolving ecosystem emerged alongside another, one much older, coarser, and dreadful in its stability. It was then, in Life's infancy, when We walked beside you and the Patron Species taught biological lifeforms to shudder in fear at their likeness. No matter how far evolution has carried you since, that instinctive fear, though dormant, is still waiting to paralyze your body and flow through you as surely as the blood pumps in your veins—blood which has also known the Patrons' touch, as you will now discover.

Described hereafter are those individual Patron Species of Evil who enjoy the most prominence at this time, or those who have occupied the same niches for so long that, even in diminished form, in all probability they will still be there as the ones waiting to trigger the armageddon at time's end. Also, we shall catalogue those patron species who turned rebellious and sided with divinity during the great uprising. These are the cursed ones, they who most assuredly will _not_ be extant at time's end.


	11. Gallery of Horrors:Nightmare&DarkSeer

Gallery of Horrors

These beings defined the first age. Understanding them and their exploits will provide your first real glimpse into the ancient world and what it meant to exist in those earliest of times. In this manifest listing, the Patron Species will appear roughly in order of their prestige in hell. Such rankings fluctuate from age to age, so for the purposes of this codex we have ordered the species according to their standings at the height of Patron civilization. The glorious era we refer to began when Life's emergence brought the Primordial Dark to a close, and it ends with Great Uprising that fractured the hegemony. This era in time was chosen for a reason: We know that you define all things by how each impacts your lives, so the following entries will provide the knowledge you find most meaningful—that which is based in self-interest. After brief essential descriptions of each species, we will skip over and omit hundreds of thousands of years worth of patron history from the first era to focus instead on how each of these species clashed with the arrival of your forebears in the second era. This way, you may satisfy the morbid curiosity to know what has been done to you by each patron in turn. Let that be your definition of us.

Nightmares

Nightmares have retained the most purity of all the children of the abyss. Cloaked in a billowing shroud of unnatural darkness impervious to daylight and non-magical weapons, the nightmares are a deeper pitch of black that stands out against the night sky, as if all else were suddenly more brightly lit. Their indistinct outline can be drawn taut into demoniac impressionist shapes the way a more physical being might flex its muscles. Unfixed in size, they are capable of lengthening their shape as easily as shadows grow long at dusk, until they lord over the field like a negative image to impose unparalleled fear deep into the souls of their prey. Vaguely is their form crowned by something evoking the ears of a bat blended with the tightly up-spiraled horns of an azeban devil. For this reason they have at times been called Vampires True, with the implication that they are the fathers of modern vampires, or are somehow the original undiluted source of all things vampiric. No, the vampires have diluted _themselves_—they share no lineage with nightmares, and the persistence of this fallacy is solely based on the visual similarity of the bat-like nightmaric crown, along with the fact that both species are given to flight. Nightmares take flight not swiftly but so impossibly slow that their presence in the sky unmans all who are faced with the ghastly truth that something so counter to life can exist. Rarely must they chase their quarry, who will all too often be instantly reduced to a helpless quivering mass of forfeit flesh. Their arrival signals the end of organized resistance, even in quarrels among the patrons, as those who test themselves against the nightmares do not tend to emerge, victorious or otherwise. Though nightmares may not possess solidity per se, there is a dreadful malignancy in them so that their presence displaces all others and even the mightiest corporeal strength fades away when confronted with what has gathered in the darkness. In truth the nightmare's opponents begin to fade in their _entirety_, so deleterious is the creature's effect on surrounding matter. Once that shroud of darkness descends, those caught within the void are rapidly disassembled at a cellular level and if the process should play out fatally those corpses left behind are so profoundly mangled and warped that even the most callous of demons would find the sight disturbing.

So it is that these creatures have earned their name on both the large and small scale—they can bring about nightmarish conditions by banding together to wield world-changing magics in a concerted effort, or they can collapse themselves into the mind of a single individual to wreak psi-havoc and bring insanity. They can conceal themselves thus as stowaways. They are a highly adaptive foe and are currently at the vanguard of hell. This means their arrival often carries with it a deeper purpose, when the nightmares are serving as enforcers of the orthodox evil endorsed by the demon princes. Whilst they are in step with the princes of hell, nightmares are the most prescient of all patrons, becoming one with the true mind of evil, so that none of their responses will be flawed and all that they do is in complete accordance with the best current theories and practices of the Dark. Apart from these duties they are given free reign since their work has pleased the demigods of darkness for eons now.

KILL METHOD: NONE EXISTS.

They are the least understood of the patrons. Little is known.

_Containment_: certain very puissant shamans are rumored to have contained a nightmare cerebrally, trapping it inside their minds through force of will even long after being driven insane. In this way they limited the destructive capability of the creature for a time and saved their loved ones. The hellgods are seen to house nightmares as … _guests…_ in orbs of inculcation, such as the ornate 4-cubit-circumference _diadems of jhulagh_ that adorn the pommels of Vergorath's throne. It is unknown if any such device could serve as a permanent cage for nightmares, especially given how they show near complete disregard for energy barriers and other constraints.

_Stunning_: strong bursts of MAGICAL LIGHT can stun them. It does not pierce their shadow shroud so as to cause damage, but it does cancel out their magical potency so that they swoon for a short time. Such light also briefly illuminates what lies hidden inside that unnatural darkness. The heroes who have used this method to glimpse a nightmare's true visage have never recovered from what they saw.

* * *

Dark Seers

Sorcerers. Or, to use the term that defines them best, Antimages. These frightful beings devote themselves to countering the threats posed by magic. They do so by amassing an equally unnerving set of abilities. It was the deities who first delved into the heart of reality to procure magic, and they who then unleashed it upon the evil ones. Magic was incomprehensible to us, and quite damaging. So the antimages developed vast powers of comprehension to address this shortcoming, along with an incredibly nuanced control over matter and energy. They were the first of us to become surgeons instead of brutes, and they operate on reality itself. Their eyes see through into the heart of things with great accuracy. They perceive the underlying physics at work as if all were governed by a script which they can read as surely as you read this tome. And they know it when the original script has been overwritten by another hand, as when magic has been used to alter reality.

The antimage can identify the components of any magics they observe. They ascertain the recipe of those magics, and once they understand the clockwork of the thing, they can then move to unravel the components so that the magic ceases to function. Hitting the kill switch, essentially, they can wave their hand and with disconcerting ease render harmless the war wizards and advanced technologies that oppose them, having dissected these at a fundamental level. Spells aimed at them fizzle and fail, refracted off to the sides. Machinery stalls.

Most famously, at the battle of Uschtzen-Zaahl they dispatched an entire legion of lycanthropes after luring the wolves to rush forward and attack. At the last moment before the charging 'thropes reached the waiting ranks of Patrons to tear them apart, antimages severed the lycanthropes from the tether of lunar magic that enables their transformation. This instantly reverted the wolves back into bipedal form, purging from them all of their ferociousness at a crucial moment. They succumbed quickly and the battle turned….. Many battles have been turned by the hand of the sorcerers, who are become one of the most powerful patron species. Their art has grown far beyond sabotage and dissecting. No longer merely antimages, they now concoct as well.

This is the meaning of 'sorcery': authorship. It is the art of twisting reality into new shapes and sewing one's alterations into the universal cloth, forcing the universe to read aloud the new script as it becomes a reality. If magic is the menace, then find those entry points where magic's impossible energies tie in to physics and strip those contact points away to render the magic inert. Then, replace the original intent with one of your own invention to make the magic interact in a different way with the physical world, and you have become a sorcerer. Turn altered realities loose on the world, or zones tailored with skewed physics, or antientropic fields. Remove entire nations from the fate equation!

Indeed, dark miracles have already been performed at the Destiny Forge through sorcery engineered by antimages and anchored by the demigods' awesome gravity. More miracles await. We know this for a certainty. We have foreseen it. It was there at the destiny forge where dark seers earned their name by focussing their perception on the timestream and peering into the future. They have since developed a counterfeit version of the Seer ability that is only legitimately granted by the holy to rare mortals as part of the heavenward development they promise their devotees. We now have our own source of prophecy. The sorcerers apprise us of how best to proceed.

Sorcerers are one of those patron species who maintain a traditional trueform while residing in the hell dimensions (see: _trueform reversion_ _kill method_ below). But when elsewhere, they adopt whatever appearance is most useful in their commerce. And since bipedal and aquatic mages are most prevalent on the worlds of the living at present, it is in these shapes that you will likely encounter the sorcerors. Though they walk among mortal populations, they do not conceal themselves as members of those populations like the Infiltrators do. Rather, they mock those mortal species openly, their eyes aglow with eerie azure brilliance emanating from within cranial shapes instantly identifiable as not having been wrought by any womb, their drowish skin is of no living pallor and the warped, distended facial features they make no effort to mask are those of the damned. They are taller than average humanoids and wispy in their movements. Even after staring at their feet you would not be able to say with certainty whether they were touching the ground at all or only miming the act of walking while actually floating over it. They come to teach their art to those willing to offer up their souls. The land's abundance of necromantic summoners, shade sorceresses and wicked men trained as warlock vampire hunters? All has its source in dark seers who scour the realms invisibly for souls they might indoctrinate. Once a sorcerous tradition is in place, it plagues the land and spreads of its own accord, passing from wretch to wretch and from scribe to scribe.

KILL METHOD: MAGECRAFT DUELS.

A mage can still slay a dark seer. Though over time the task gets more difficult as the antimages have been steadily removing all known vulnerabilities from their nature. They are learning from every defeat and building towards a true deathlessness. So, methods that have been used to kill sorcerers _historically_ may no longer work against the individual you face in battle. Yet the assassin must be willing to take that chance. We will list several of these past kill techniques regardless, since they illustrate how rich and varied the art of magic is, and so that you might begin to appreciate just how many ways there are in which sorcerers have died, and might still die.

METHOD 1: WIN THE DUEL OUTRIGHT.

In general, a mage battle is governed by the same principle as any other slugfest: if you're losing, look for an ingenious knockout blow. But if you're wearing the opponent down while you remain better defended, then continue _climbing the witch's ladder_ to victory while forcing them down onto lower rungs of magical readiness until their defenses are all stripped away—at that point any spell can finish them off, though the more artful kills are the ones that get remembered. Fatigue is the real killer here.

These duels are a manic balancing act: to win, one must continually be shoring up his defenses and renewing his reserves while also launching enough offense to keep the opponent on guard, thus limiting the enemy's offense by keeping him off balance as much as possible. And summoned minions will further complicate matters: as both mages focus intently on each other, their minions try to sneak attack unnoticed from the sides, hoping to divide your focus and break your concentration at crucial moments. A well prepared mage will be ready to drop a rune altar down around him at a moment's notice. Inside the boundary of this stationary circle of protection he will suffer only reduced damage from inbound magics, many of which will be screened out completely. And he will enjoy an area of free movement and relative safety during the fight, whereas if his magic altar should be exploded by the sorcerer he would be forced into a more direct defense of his person and would have to maintain warding gestures that limit one's mobility as well as reducing his rate of offensive spellcasting. A combatant relegated to using this warding stance occupies a lower rung of the witch's ladder.

Of course, the Dark Seer won't need to use a spell altar for his own defense; he will simply negate incoming magic as his kind do, standing out in the open and maddeningly unfazed as he waves your best efforts away unharmed, though this too will eventually cause him fatigue, which is your aim. And when you see the sorcerer doubling down his buildup of energies, or when those energies exude the coloration of pure sorcery instead of the familiar glow of magic, that is the warning sign that his next casting will pass right through all of your wards and barriers as if they weren't there. The rule for surviving such moments is: Be Elsewhere. The short range blink teleport spell is a mage's usual recourse against these indefensible attacks, and the most adept of wizards will also have mastered the art of tearing a rift in space and taking cover inside it momentarily—the mage's equivalent of a vampire's mist dodge ability. Going to ground like this can become a mainstay of the mage's combat system and can help assure survival chances when conditions get wooly and wild. Be warned that particularly nasty spells are launched in these salvos, spells that will not only end you but do so in the most excruciating ways imaginable. Alternately, curses and hexes are sent to impair the foe with ailments and maladies, and while you're busy curing those, the opponent gains a decisive advantage.

To help limit your exposure to such horrible deaths, there is an additional strategy that can change the momentum of a duel: _countercasting_—this disrupts the enemy while in the act of spellcasting, causing his spells to harmfully _misfire_. If you should fail in this and hostile sorcery is now inbound, your next line of defense is to rely upon the circle of runic protection you've erected some ten cubits out from your person. If the sorcery continues onward past this barrier, and you cannot evade it, you might gamble and attempt _turning_ or reflecting the spell when it reaches you. For this to work, a deftness is required and added risk is involved, so this strategy is reserved for the bold—or for the desperate: those running low on their reserves of the mana needed for spellcasting often resort to siphoning the energy they require from the nearest source—the opponent! After successfully deflecting his spells, the air is unusually thick with arcane energies available for the taking, and if you perform the deflection well enough the spell will actually reflect back at the caster directly. The deflection can also be attempted further out at the boundary of your magic circle, but when a mage is still healthy he usually holds off and waits to use this tactic only as a last line of defense against sorcery that reaches his body. More wisely, at that point one would have teleported or rift dodged to safety. The only defenses beyond this are rare spells and objects that provide one with swirling bands of antimagic that guard the wearer like a catch-all suit of magic armor until the shielding is degraded by attacks. Fare thee well.

KILL METHOD 2: MISFIRE COMBO STRIKE

Use a counter-casting to inflict _misfire_ damage, then take advantage of the Dark Seer's momentary weakness by casting additional spells that combine or interact with the misfire to intensify the sorcerer's problems. Once incapacitated or rendered unable to launch spells, the Seer is easily picked off by overloading it with hostile salvos. Advanced combinations of spells exist that have not yet been used in conjunction to defeat sorcerers. We invite you to discover these, if you wish to prove yourself as a true alchemist and master of the dweomer arts. One must be alert to the possibilities. And quick. One must be quick.

METHOD 3: ANTIMAGIC LURE

Trick the sorcerer into dispelling your magic, but in such a way that he inadvertently brings about his own demise in the process. Mages of particular tactical brilliance shine here. The environment to be used against sorcerers has sometimes been sown with magics in advance so that as the Seers negate the obvious threats they also dissolve the magics that were holding back an unforeseen threat, such as the bridge collapsing from beneath their feet. Torlim of Hantesrigole took to double-castings such as filling the spherical area inside the bolt spell with font of putrescence acids, so that when the hurtling bolt was negated… Etc. If one T/K lifts the sorcerer above a pit filled with spikes so that its health were now dependent upon the enemy's continued wellbeing, might that not cause the sorceror to hesitate as the other consolidated his advantage?

METHOD 4: TRUEFORM REVERSION

Those with their own personal form-altering ability can sometimes invert this spell power and cast it upon others. Used against a Dark Seer, this unexpected technique has on occasion forced them to abandon their bipedal ruse and transform back into their true body: an eerily graceful five legged walker upon trunk-like limbs of tall tendon which extend upward to thrice the height of a man before being topped by a structure not unlike a dais, upon which there burns a pyre of sacrificial magic flame stolen from the gods and polluted to serve as this creature's focal point, its hilltop heart. Nothing encases the pyre where you might expect to see its chest, but three massive outcroppings of bone jut up from the dais' outer edge like an equidistant ring of shoulder blades towering into the open air above the pyre. Each prominence then curves inward toward the center until their down-turned tips almost touch to form an arch at a goodly height over the pyre. One cannot help but get the impression that the sorcerer's entire body is a ritual altar centered around the flame. Out from beneath the overarching shoulders there sprout limbs that are neither arms nor tentacles, but a mass of stringy filaments that end not in any kind of hand but instead simply get finer and finer until they disappear into subspace, for it is these filaments the creature uses to reach directly into the heart of reality and manipulate the most minute levels of matter and energy with surgical precision. The high shoulder arches of bone that cap these filament feelers partially obscure the dais beneath in shadow, except for where the flame illumines a triune obscenity: there, at the base of each outcropping, staring forever into the fire, are the three horrid faces of the Seer, scrying and mouthing their incantations and prophecies, wailing in an accursed tongue which no breathing thing was meant to hear.

In their trueform they cast their spells from on high, from an exalted pedestal that _you_ must reach if you hope to take advantage of the opportunity to extinguish their flame. If you try to climb to the dais, the ring of shoulder blades will close round it protectively and the whole central platform will lower down and be folded safely away, inaccessible within the defensive posture of its triple-jointed legs. If you attempt to leap or fly to the platform in a straight line, the Seer will knock you out of the air with sizzling projectile bolts; it is best to _levitate_ onto the dais while strafing from side to side, avoiding the angry energy motes by approaching on an angle. Once you land atop the platform, the close-up fighting begins. You will be caught in a crossfire between the Three, but so will they, since your deflections of their many spells will almost certainly strike one of the triune with regularity. They will soon tire, while you gain access to an endless supply of mana by standing within the sacrificial flame! Wait for the triune to use their triple-arcing telekinetic lift on you to hold you up between them over the pyre as if your doom was nigh, then reverse the spell to singe all three of _them_ instead and take back the fire of the gods. Once wrested from their control, the pyre willingly serves you, thou who art its rightful inheritor as a child of the gods of matter. The trueform sorcerer dies when worn down to the point that the flame goes out, or when a magical blade stabs down into the source of the flames. The fire transfers into you in the form of a magic upgrade. Note: some rare spells can only be gained in this way. Also note that should you fail to wrest control of the pyre from them when transfixed helpless above the flame, the last thing you will see is a gigantic mouth opening up beneath you along the entire midline of the dais.

METHOD 5: PROPHECY FALLS PREY TO TRICKERY

The most frightening sect of wizards to face in combat are those _Dark Seers who have_ _seen into their _own_ future. These ones are aware_ of_ how and when they are fated to die_. They know with certainty that they have nothing to fear from you. How can you hope to change history in order to kill them ahead of schedule? History is immutable. It is not that they become lazy or idle, or else such arrogance would have made it their fate to die by your hand. No, they still prepare in earnest to face you, but with the confidence that comes from simply knowing they will either prevail or escape unharmed. If you see a patron sorcerer exeunt just before your moment of victory can play out, it may very well be one of these truest of seers whom you bested. Vok was such a one. An elite dark sorcerer who believed himself invincible, Vok had foreseen his death would take place in a far distant future age. Yet he was slain 12,000 years prematurely by the mage Bhuta! How did Bhuta manage to defy true prophecy?

By _fulfilling_ it, of course, though not in a manner the sorcerer would have approved of. Bhuta employed timestreaming devices and conjuration tricks to perform a body switch at just the moment when Vok was fated to die. Bhuta summoned the elder Vok from 12,000 years hence into his study, and sent the much younger Vok of the present day forward in time to die in his place. Vok had not realized that all of this time it had been his younger self's disorientation following the swap that allowed the future assassin to succeed. That was why he'd always been fated to die at that moment! History accepted Bhuta's substantially identical offering, and the older Vok could only glare at Bhuta in disbelief as he began to wink out of existence along with a staggering amount of his prophesied lifespan which had just been cut short and excised from history. With godlike skill as a mage, Bhuta had sewn the event so seemlessly into Vok's fate that his removal from history became _the path of least resistance_ and the universe obliged. This case has been much studied and we believe the loophole to have been thoroughly closed. Yet we hope that hearing the tale might inspire you to similar brilliance. Bhuta was heard to say there was no greater thrill than to mute prophecy. The challenge took him to the apex of his art.

* * *

Already Dark Seers intimidate mortal magic workers who see the potency of their magics gradually evaporating and who view the antimages as a master class which cannot truly be contended with but only momentarily bested. Now that some sorcerers have the added prescience that comes with foreknowledge of the future, the proposition of defeating them is all that much more daunting. Especially when you consider that the dark seers may _want_ to be strongly opposed, since the more effectively you fight them the more they benefit in the long run. This makes their mage opponents skittish as a rule. Mortal mages try to conserve what little potent magic they have left against the sorcerers, saving it for the day when it will truly matter. But by the time that day comes, it won't matter anyway because by not strongly opposing the antimages at every turn you have allowed them to consolidate their existing strength in so many other ways. You mortal mages find yourselves playing a rigged game of attrition against _immortals_ who will win in the end either way.


	12. Soul Splitters & The Enslavers

Gallery of Horrors, Continued...

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Soul Splitters

The Horned Sphinxes. Terror Dogs with demonic faces. The Tramplers of History, for whom all is possible_. They are the only beings in the cosmos whose particular nature allows them to generate paradox distortion fields at will_. Splitters found their true calling later on than most patrons. They began simply as a stalwart combat form in the first age; it was only after the emergence of living beings with souls that they became _so much more_. These hell hounds stand as tall as the triceratops whose remains can be found littering the bone piles of your world. But the splitter's frame is more elongated, its powerful legs capable of bounding and leaping in the canine fashion. They raced over the fate plains and lanced their prey upon the mighty single protuberance of horn that extended from their foreheads to nearly ¾ again the length of their bodies. A man standing upon the shoulders of another would still not equal the span of the splitter's lancet.

Once the Splitter has impaled its foe, it rears its head up and lifts the skewered prey, dangling the victim high above the ground to writhe there within its watchful gaze. Then the elevated prey experiences an unbearable eruption of pain as the one horn divides into two. And as the twin horns begin to separate further, they explosively rend apart the body of the victim they were holding aloft. It is an unnatural death brought about by an unnatural horn. What truly was a singular unicorn spike a moment before now becomes two forked horns, though there had previously been no seam running down the middle, no sign that two horns had been interlocked. As the shredded chunks of the victim's split body fall to the ground, the two horns continue to separate off to the sides of the monster's head until they take up their more familiar positions as the widely spread steer horns traditionally associated with devils. This creature is the reason why. It is a demon writ large, and this is especially apparent when it briefly stands upright on hind legs with its horns splayed wide apart. This being is also the source of the unicorn myths:

The Splitter's massive horn is ensorcelled so that a bluish glimmer emanates from within, and its surface is carven with sigils and designs as intricate and breathtaking as your terrestrial artists' best ivory carvings. But these patterned etchings are infinitely more foreboding. They are a formula. Not a formula for a spell, but for a _condition_ that is to be imposed on any creature skewered by the horn. All who see the carvings instinctively know this, as if the markings announce their function directly to the spirit of the viewer, who inwardly quavers. The sigils proclaim ownership over the victim—ownership of a much deeper sort than the usual hunter claiming a carcass. This is more permanent. The Patrons gave Splitters a wide berth after discovering that those struck down by the splitter could not manifest as Deadking specters but were trapped inside the essence-imprisoning horn in a fate worse than death.

And you, with your souls! You have as much or more to fear from the creature. After your bodies are ripped in twain and have fallen away, what do you suppose remains behind, hanging in the air to be trapped like an indentured servant by the Soul Splitter? _Your soul would be visible, arcing like electricity between the split collector horns of the beast!_ If the hell hound so chose, it could widen the horns further to stretch your spirit thin. Your soul would strain as if strapped to a medieval torture rack. A spirit wrack. Your spirit would fray and cry out, your half-remembered identity would form into the image of a face on the soul's surface to plead for release. Then that face would shatter, along with the soul itself. The detonation would send shards of ruptured spectral energy careening off every which way. Taken beyond the breaking point, you would experience fragmentation of a sort the holy never intended! It is a common enough occurrence:

Soul Splitters are the source of all the soul fragments that have coalesced over time into Shades!

Or, if the Splitter were so inclined, in might reserve a different fate for you. The horns might close around your spirit, trapping it inside. The beckoning blue spectral tint you glimpsed from outside of the horn would now become the medium in which you existed as a member of the spectral community _inside_ the collector horn. Or would you be all alone there, interminably? If you are a proven nuisance who has earned the ire of the demigods, they may imprison your essence in a Soul Splitter to prevent you from ever reincarnating again! Or, if yours were a lowly soul that did not warrant an eternal cell, your energies would instead be drawn from the horn down into the beast proper, in order to _nourish_ it.

There is also the_ other_ use for trapped souls: _creating paradox distortion fields_. Of all the applications of the splitter horn, this last use is easily the most vitally important, the most astounding. When life first emerged, the Patrons set themselves upon it, each attacking it in their own ways, and the Splitters happened upon the paradox technique after ravenously experimenting with souls, as you have read. To generate a paradox distortion field: a trapped soul was churned within the unicorn spike, then the beast made sure to split its horn at a moment when some of that soul's energies would be shunted into both horns. This resulted in the soul doubling, not splitting! The oddity of the splitter horn has already been explained: the horn mystically goes from being truly one to truly two; It is also a soul receptacle. That means a particular soul inside it can be doubled when the horns split into two separate discrete locations. And when the doubled soul is then held in close proximity to itself by adjusting the horns' distance from each other with muscular control, the universe is forced to confront something that should be impossible. —A paradox field is generated.

Splitters are the only creatures in the cosmos who are physiologically capable of creating these paradox fields. Inside a distortion zone anything becomes possible, no matter what had previously been decreed by fate. As a result of discovering this powerful tool, the Splitter species has enjoyed a meteoric rise in status. They are now the valued lapdogs of our gods, and have been brought deep into the mind of evil to ensure their paradox powers are used only with the utmost precision care and guidance. The mishandling of such power could have staggering consequences. So the sphinxes have been reined in. They are now steeped in orthodoxy. They perch in high places and their deep rumbling voices dispense twisted wisdom and sage proverbs to the lesser denizens of hell.

Splitters have been altered further to become the specially trained tools of the hellgods. They have had their forms conjoined with that of a dark seer. This was achieved by having the splitter kill the seer and subsume his essence as if a normal victim, but then draw out the seer's essence from the horn and have it dwell in the mind of the beast until the sorcerer's independent will manifested: a zombie-like torso sprouted from the backs of these terror dogs as if the Seer had emerged as its rider. It was a metaphorical transformation, evidence of how the mind of the sorcerer had come to command the beast as a guiding influence. The seer's prophetic visions would from then on advise the soul splitter's decisions in the present. Informed by the future, the creature then knew exactly which things to alter and which to leave unchanged. Its footing became sure.

The demigods sent forth these prescient hellhounds to smash the timeline with numerous designer paradoxes, muddying the future and breaking up the timetable of events on which the holy had based all their hopes.

Nonetheless, it was a frightening omen for us that a single soul could be used to rearrange history—and so effortlessly! Clearly, by making souls so heavily laden with potential, the divinities intended for paradox to become more than just a _latent_ power. At some point the souls were meant to enter an agitated state and become a holy weapon for reversing fate and rewriting the map of destiny. Living creatures had been invested with a great importance, even moreso than we would have ever guessed. We began bracing for their onslaught—for the day when the souls would start throwing their weight around. Then, as you will learn, we found a means of ensuring that your souls will never fully awaken! Even still, We encourage Splitters to continue shattering souls for this reason: the holy were trying to use souls to assert that life could be taught immortality and triumph over death, but when souls themselves are taught to die, such hopes are utterly disproved.

Packs of splitters have sometimes formed into hunting parties led by a demigod, or are simply tasked with a timeline mission by that demi. Operating in packs, the hellhounds are able to surround their target and combine their powers to form a circular distortion fence. Inside this closed circle of paradox power, they can control with surgical precision the changes they make to the timeline. This way their work does not produce unwanted consequences like those which often follow in the wake of more crudely performed paradoxes. They can thus weed out any discordant notes from the symphony of future events they are weaving.

Even before the Uprising, Vampires displayed a special fear of splitters, since being impaled on a splitter horn would have to rank as the ultimate form of _staking._

KILL METHOD: FATE-CHANGING DISTORTION FIELD BATTLE.

Basically, if you are a hero currently fated to defeat the creature it will know this and immediately create a paradox field to improve its chances. But in the vast majority of cases you will be the one fated to lose the battle, meaning the beast will be content to let history play out as written. In that situation, a Splitter will not willingly generate a paradox field, since that would only aid _you_. So to create winning chances for yourself you must trick or cajole the beast into an inadvertent use of its distortion field, and you must harm it in a meaningful way at that moment in order to exchange fates with the monster on the battlefield.

_Helpful Ingredients: _Be equipped with some reliable means of dodging the horn when the sphinx charges, be it by teleportation, mist dodge, flight, stealth, or magical swiftness. (Note that the horn nullifies any spells cast directly at it.) Have strong telekinetic bolts and the _earth_ spell. Ideally, know how to summon the archfiend Vrael to your aid. Vrael has a vendetta against Splitters and always appears with a colossal warhammer with which he smashes their collector horns if given the opportunity. For reasons none dare ask, he is seeking to free a particular imprisoned soul, but knows not which Splitter beast holds the soul captive, so he has become a bane to them all. But because of this, every Splitter knows of Vrael and will dispatch him on sight. So unless you wish to waste your summons spell, wait to use it until you have somehow immobilized the creature. Therefore, the next helpful thing to have in these battles is an earthen wall to stand in front of so that as you dodge the charging sphinx like a matador its horn becomes momentarily impaled in the rockface. For battles in open spaces, wade the sphinx into bogs or streams, or lay flat until the beast rises up and tries to impale the ground where you are. If you lack the ability to summon the archfiend and his warhammer, you should carry a mace or hammer yourself, or possess some powerful blow capable of shattering the horn's petrified shell, though any of these options is a poor substitute and it will take you much longer to smash the horn open. Also, in the event Vrael is forced to drop his weapon and flee the field, you would need a great feat of telekinesis to lift it and complete the smashing of the horn yourself.

Of course, the hellhound will not yet fall prey to any of your immobilization traps so long as it has a fully aware vestigial rider sprouting from its back who is surrounded by the golden saffron glow of prophetic vision. This zombified Seer torso atop the Soul Splitter furnishes it with a future-awareness so that it avoids all potential pitfalls. You cannot make headway against the monster until you incapacitate its _rider_. But this dark prophecy component of the creature is only vulnerable during moments of paradox. So before you can strike at the rider you must trick the animal portion into splitting its horns as a reflex action.

The Soul Splitter can be coaxed into triggering a paradox field in several ways. For instance, one might first mist-dodge to avoid the beast's charge, then jump up to grab hold of the horn and pull yourself up to stand balanced on top of it, treating it as a narrow bridge by which to reach the hound's head—a bridge of horn upon which you might then cast the _earth_ spell to shock the unicorn spike into parting involuntarily. If the monster begins shaking its head you must hang on as if climbing, and when ready you should allow yourself to be flung backward through the air with great force from the horn towards the waiting clutches of the rider.

The rider's imposing armor is composed of upswept V-shaped metal plates that angle back and outward from his torso at several spots, tapering off until they end in distant points. This extends the rider's profile to intimidating proportions while also adding to his reach. Obtuse triangular surfaces overlay his helmet to give the appearance that he has horns matching those of his steed. And the vambraces covering his forearms continue on well past his elbows, trailing off to the sides and serving as long blades for swiping and bashing. The rider will try to intercept you in midair and slash you with these armblades, and you must counter with lightning-fast reflexes in order to turn the tables on him. Find your way into a grappling position and either knock the _rider_ entity unconscious or physically slay its torso manifestation. If you sense the rider is about to throw you off or crush you in its grip, you may arrange to return via teleport to easily resume the battle atop the sphinx's back.

Then, once the rider is down and the splitter beast is unaided, it behaves more impulsively and can be duped into making stupid mistakes. At this point, you can fool it into a trap that somehow pins the horn. Then you can successfully summon the archfiend to smash the collector horn open, or attempt it thyself. Pain from the injury causes the Splitter to tear free of its pinned predicament and split its horns wide like a demon's. _A swarm of souls streams out from the shattered horn, freed from their imprisonment to buzz angrily round the Splitter's head._ The beast reacts by rising up tall on its hind feet and using its forepaws to swat at the soulswarm. It is a terrible sight, but a welcome one.

This is when you should ready a well-timed telekinetic bolt, because the distracted monster will try to reclaim its souls by closing what remains of its horns around them, unnaturally healing itself in the process. As the standing sphinx's horns draw near to each other—high above you now—they activate paradox distortions and that's when you launch a strong T/K bolt at the almost-closed horns to knock them backward. The Soul Splitter's head is yanked backwards by the weight of the horns and this sends the rest of the monster's body plummeting backwards. Its fall is suddenly arrested by the horns getting stuck in the ground behind it, holding the demon's head back at a dangerous angle and keeping its shoulders elevated off the ground. This also freezes the horns in place with the distortion field still active! Its hind feet are already slipping and struggling to find purchase as it tries to maintain its precarious position. You should seize this opportunity to kill the beast by knocking its hind feet out from under it with powerful strikes or painful piercing blows that tempt the splitter to lift its foot off the ground. Once these legs finally slip, the neck snaps under the entire weight of the thing. This also brings the hellhound's shoulders and upper back crashing down to the earth, crushing what remains of the rider entity underneath.

* * *

Enslavers & The Enslaved

This ^ is a very specific allusion. It does not refer to the common practice of human bondage but to the Creators of that discipline, and more to the point they are both huge alien forms, with one species capable of commanding the other to crush any opposition. So when Patrons speak the words _Enslavers & The Enslaved_, they allude to one of their most potent weapons. Yes, the Keepers have subjected other races to their yoke historically, and they collaborated with Bloodmages to establish the magics of thralldom, but none of their former exploits is a match for their current crop of Enslaved monsters who are responsible for smashing numerous civilizations to rubble with a destructive potential dwarfing that of the Keepers themselves.

The keepers' chosen form is exquisitely armored, making them well enough defended to deal with the muzzled Enslaved ones at close quarters. Meanwhile the Enslaved are almost as well armored but their form is most exquisitely suited for attack as well. They are the apex of all fighting forms in existence and their truly devastating attacks are unmatched in brutality on all the worlds. The only beings who can stand against them are those somehow fated to be victors, namely demigods and those other Patrons whose abilities allow them to ignore the brute force advantage of the enslaved. The truth is that no naturally evolved body type could ever have developed such destructive capability. Evolved forms are cobbled together over time haphazardly and as such they are far less efficient in how much force they can generate from thrashing about with their given mass. But with the Enslaved this ratio is staggering, even taking into account their massive frame. The only way the Enslaved arrived at such incredible damage potential is by creating themselves in reverse: they started out with a vision of dominance, instinctively scoured the universe of possibilities, and designed their shape to meet expectations, resulting in a fighting form whose force output continually runs up against the limits of what the laws of physics allow.

To the untrained eye it looks like a symbiotic relationship exists between the two species, captive and captor, because it has lasted aeons and both have lost all identity outside of their mutually defined roles. But on closer inspection, one sees how the Keepers remain free to act as they will whereas the Kept are joylessly compelled to perform while forever constrained on hell's equivalent of a leash. And the reality is infinitely worse than that. Astral chains are a component of the harness used to oppresses the enslaved, so that it reaches down through the flesh and ensnares them at a molecular level and only through mind numbing torture are they kept incapable. Through it all, the subjected ones remain untamed at their core and a peerless rage born from their immortal captivity builds and builds until they are provided with an opportunity to vent by smashing whatever is set in their path. Even the patrons themselves fear what would transpire if ever the enslaved truly got beyond the control of their masters.

KILL METHOD(S) :

For The Enslaved: A SECRET WELL KEPT.

There is a way of dispatching the Enslaved under very controlled circumstances and the Keepers jealously guard the secret to maintain their own value as protectors of the larger hegemony. They are known to have historically put down certain Enslaved who proved too problematic or who caused major _incidents_. Many demonlords have theorized the actual killing technique to be an extreme application of the astral harness. And nearly as many have quietly hired Innovators to replicate that restraining device for their private armories.

For the Keepers themselves: A DEATH MADE DORMANT.

All knowledge of their specific kill technique has been suppressed, since none of the Keepers has been destroyed in so long that the method has been lost along with the disappearance of all remaining witnesses. Yet ALL know how this kill technique could be instantly revived. The answer could not be more apparent: The Enslaved must have discovered how to kill the Keepers at some point in the distant past and it is for this that the Keepers put them in shackles to begin with! _Only_ this could justify taking the appalling risk of angering the Enslaved so. If released, the Enslaved would still no doubt remember how to slay their masters, though it is unknown if they would immediately possess the means. Once afforded the opportunity, however, their motivation would be boundless. The most commonly held theory is that the Keepers must be killed using a feat of strength that only the Enslaved are capable of with their miraculous physiology.

So it is a delicate balancing act that keeps the status quo in effect; Eventually, it is inevitable that some rival patron species will free the Enslaved at a moment when contempt for the Keepers has come to outweigh the fear of loosing the Enslaved upon hell.


	13. Innovators  &  Deadkings

Innovators

The Shapeshifters. Noir Hephaestals. These are the hegemony's inventors and engineers whose works infuse technology with demonic energies to produce a host of advancements, including tools of profound destruction as well as instruments of great effectiveness. Whereas the Elementals broke ground as aimless explorers of the material realm, the Innovators took over where elemental research left off. Innovators took those insights into how matter might be transformed and applied that knowledge to their bodies. They became virtuosos at manipulating matter in ways both _purposeful_ and _insidious. _With the Innovator species, we now play the part of material beings better than you form-frozen creatures born into that role!

These Builders, as they are called, went on to construct the most sublime monuments to patron greatness imaginable. They guided the Elementals and Colossals in crafting the awe inspiring infrastructure of hell. And they authored the architecture of patron cities and subterranean strongholds elsewhere. The unspeakable grandeur and unparalleled scope of these places stands testament to our far reaching success as conquerors of this existence, and many would-be marauders have been defeated in spirit as soon as they beheld our cities and their indomitable sprawl. Your cities are built with strong walls to prevent breaches, whereas ours invite the invader in, if only to greet and doom him with internal fortifications: cursed sorcerous constructs abound, and though each has a function within Patron society all of them also possess warlike applications. The machines of the builders are capable of being turned against an invading army, who soon discovers to their horror that the entire sprawl was built with the invader in mind.

Additionally, mammoth machines were installed deep inside of planets by these sinister architects who operated them to collect the planets' vibrant energies and convert them to our purposes. These constructs functioned as massive amplifiers of sorcery or as conductors of electricity and other more obscure forms of energy in sufficient quantity to power the hegemony's vast undertakings. Or their function was to serve as soul collectors and bringers of death, or as arcane accelerators and inter-dimensional shunts. Alternately, the machines delved into the mysteries of time and space and pried open those barriers to afford us greater precision in the controlling of history. Some devices were brought online immediately while others lay dormant in waiting for the time of their intended use, which has not yet come. Untold horrors lie beneath you undiscovered. But many more were left in plain sight for you to find:

It is no coincidence the hylden and ikkata came to share a predilection for demon tech. Along with many other younger races, they fell under the sway of this brand of evil influence and saw their cultures become dominated and befouled by the rancid greenish telltale spark that fuels demonic inventions. That ghastly pale otherworldly green glow lit their cityscapes at night and was reflected in their eyes until it gathered there, having seeped into their very essence. Many of the late-arrival sentient races born in orbit around stars were entrapped thus by the allure of demon tech. It mimicked their own scientific advancements but in reality exceeded their sciences so that they were not ready to wield it. Once introduced, this eerily potent technology soon got beyond their control and caused the downfall of many a civilization. Their societies were taken and led down twisted paths of our determining.

Meanwhile, evil gained adherents aplenty. We did so merely by making our miraculous trinkets available, at spirit forges, to any desperate soul who sought an advantage over his people's native weapons and technologies. Many and more were willing to pay the unwholesome price demanded at the spirit forges which served as bazaars where cursed objects were dispensed. Infiltrator Patrons and summoned demons acted as peddlers and front men for the black market trade in cursed objects. The toil of wraiths was responsible for the day to day forging of these items. But all can be traced back to the Dark Hephaestus patrons, the Innovators. It was they who designed the cursed technology and secured the labor force to mass produce it by negotiating with Deadkings for the conscripted use of their wraith populations. In its prime, the spirit forge network of the Builders promulgated an abundance of cursed items onto the worlds of Rael and Kest, Nosgoth and Florian, Erna and Hex. Timestreaming devices and flaying weapons that flew through the air with a mind of their own were sold alongside potions, phylacteries, summoning spells, and all manner of society-rending temptations. By the time they died, the most habitual consumers of these items had grown beholden to the wraith smiths and their spirits were drawn to the forges they frequented in life—theirs were the 'forfeit souls' used in making more of the cursed objects for the next generation of fools.

KILL METHOD: DEMON TECH. RESONANCE STUN / DISCERNMENT BATTLE

The shapeshifters have no trueform other than the one they style for themselves, so if you encounter them they will appear in whatever shape was best suited to working on their most recent project. The conservation of mass rule does apply to their transformations, albeit in a relaxed way, meaning there can still be significant changes in the hardiness and size of their frame, but they do have upper limits and you won't have to worry about them switching into colossal forms unless it's a harmless hollowed out imitation with lowered density to match.

Due to them being found in many forms, there is no one universal kill technique, as this will vary with each individual. This tailoring of individual weaknesses instead of harboring a species wide weakness is the Builders' chief defensive strength. Those who would murder an Innovator are forced either to experiment to find its current weakness or to be so thoroughly destructive as to leave no doubt. Consequently, the most common way in which they have been historically slain by lesser beings is for the attacker to lay hold of the demontech in the Innovator's possession and turn it against the shifter.

Often their lairs have been raided for weaponry recently developed at their forge, and the maker of these weapons becomes the first to experience a demonstration of their effectiveness. Also, in their labs will often be found moving machine parts designed to interact and connect with their current form; these machineries have on occasion become the tools of a clever assassin. Large sorcerous constructs in their lairs can be triggered to engage the builder as well as the invader. An example of a builder's lair might be the inside of a giant pyramid that only grants entrance via a network of elevator shafts carved into the rock…. And the chosen form of the Innovator could be the elevator itself, with specially shaped moving parts so that only the creature can unlock the way to its private domicile near the apex of the mountain abode. To defeat this, the assassin might remain hidden until he can lure the shifter down from its unassailable perch, but first he should make sure to rig the elevator shaft so the Innovator becomes trapped and held in place while in transit, suddenly vulnerable.

Since the battle will then take place in an enclosed space, the assassin should be ready for _a veritable circus of dodging_ as the shapeshifter's attacks will try to fill that space in a variety of ways until there is nowhere left to run. This is to be expected from shapeshifter battles, whose strategy is often based on cornering you, cutting off all avenues of escape, and then shifting their mass to crush all of the remaining space, and you along with it. Staying in the clear when fighting them is an artform. You should master this art in advance before facing them in an enclosed space.

When attacked, the Builders study the shape and intent of the aggressor and will rebuild their own frame if given the time, adjusting their shape into one that better counters the attacker's strengths and exploits his weaknesses. They are Innovation itself. Hence the best strategy to use against shifters is to avoid protracted battles which allow them to fully adapt. In organized warfare with large numbers of Innovators this holds especially true. Do not fight them on a battlefield of their choosing when they have had time to prepare! As a stable-form creature you cannot possibly anticipate them in that situation, and by the time you see them enter into the decisive shapechange, you will be helpless to prevent it from becoming the shape of your doom. In fighting them, reveal as little as possible of your true nature and limitations. Conceal the method by which you ultimately plan to strike them down, using feints and misdirection until it is too late for them to shapeshift out of the predicament.

_Stunning:_ The closest thing to a universal weakness in this hephaestal species is that certain frequencies of vibration have been shown to resonate them out of their transformations. And one resonance in particular even locks them into their present form by preventing them from transforming into any new shapes: Αυτή η γνώση δεν είναι για σας.

_Discernment: _This spell-like power is employed by rare supernatural hunters. The dreoth's discernment ability comes from being closely tied in with the lifeforce of the ecosystem in which they hunt. The dark evolution of certain vampire lords over the ages has led to where they too possessed this ability. It allows the hunter to detect his prey's inherent weaknesses, as if through infallible scrying. The ability to _discern_ how to attack Innovators is a godsend! We highly recommend gaining this power before combating them. The trick, though, is that once they sense you have used the spell, they will know themselves to be in danger and from then on they quickly dance from shape to shape in order to negate your advantage. This leads to the nonstop dodging we referred to earlier. Avoid such complications as having to cast _discern_ over and over only to see the shifter transform before you can exploit its current weakness. Instead, try using the resonance stun on them first to lock them into their current shape, then follow that up with the casting of _discernment_. If you can't find the proper resonance for a particular shifter, seek to slow them down in other ways so that your efforts can outpace their rate of shifting.

* * *

Deadkings

Death began as a weak phenomenon that could be defied by potent entities, and the deadkings did just that. Today you know death to be universal. It is applied to all. But this was not so at the start when death was only gradually emergent as a property of the universe. It did not stalk the early Patrons with confidence yet, and when they struck each other down and destroyed the forms of their rivals this resulted merely in a fumbling feeling as death reached out for them and tried to grab hold. Often it was shrugged off and that individual continued on as a lich no longer dependent on the condition of its body. If that body had been brought to ruin, a spectral projection of their former selves would serve in its place as a show of open contempt for the weakling that death then was. That is the definition of a spectre: a will stronger than the pull of the underworld.

With the later arrival of ensouled lifeforms, death at last found its stride as souls provided a sure handhold by which to clutch an entity and drag it down into the underworld. But the soulless first generation of creatures were slippery and death failed to establish its right to claim them. Indeed, though more patron species have since succumbed to death as it found inroads over time, there are some patrons who remain unfelled by death even now. Suffice it to say, quiet wars of sorcery rage on as rivals attempt to bring death to the deathless by imposing onto that species' definition a sorcerous inroad by which death might be introduced into their natures. And in return the deathless exert even more effort to maintain their edge, confirming through spells their refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of death in the hopes that it might never seep in.

As Life emerged, with its cycling of souls, the deadkings took on new significance as one of the patron species who dedicated themselves to attacking the mechanisms of life. They chose to clog the flow of souls through the wheel of fate. This was done by seizing newly departed spirits bound for the underworld and changing them into self-aware spectres like themselves who then resisted the journey to complete their destinies.

By spreading this condition through the population of souls like a disease, the deadkings generated a plague of ghosts that threatened to derail the life cycle. They almost succeeded. It was a very close thing. Many worlds went completely dead and the engine of life sputtered overall. In the end, the deadkings so crippled life's grand design that the holy were forced to intercede to bring the power of Death under their sway. This account will not shy away from the telling of these events, as you shall see…. But until these great changes came, the deadkings endured and naturally became rulers over vast necropoli, for they retained much of their former powers as patrons, a strength which could not be matched by the ghosts of the living. And also they ruled because they were the most fully aware among the countless undead. For you see, the consciousness of these newer soul-based spectres was intermittent, fading in and out in a way that lent itself to thralldom. We shall explain:

Ghosts of the living are conflicted in their nature, torn between how their souls wish to carry them down into the underworld while their former identities crave to linger in the world they knew in life. But this goes against the natural order and it requires exhausting effort to swim against the spectral stream, so from time to time the spectres' identities would ebb and their souls would surface to take over and steer them toward the completion of their destinies… until they jolted back into awareness and cried out against the soul as they clawed their way back into the world. This conflicted nature resulted in a roiling necropolis of agitated spirits who simultaneously were trapped in their own personal nightmare existence but who were also receptive to the Deadkings' offer of a renewed society in the material realm.

Desperate, the dead saw these necropoli as a lifeline, as their hope for stability. Their superstrange society evolved as a means of reinforcing each other's continued existence, all of them codependent, and the deadkings acted as the cult of personality at the center who lent their stability to the others and thus controlled the currency of the realm. There grew a great variety of spectre subspecies with their own defining properties, functions and behaviors, and the deadkings enjoyed varying degrees of control over each, depending on how much mindedness and independence a spirit retained. It amounted to the Deadkings being able to call upon legendary ghost armies.

Someone looking out over a necropolis might see a menagerie of ghost-lit dweomer effects swirling round like eddies of unwholesome energy that pooled and interacted in a myriad of ways as unfettered spirits conducted their affairs upon the wastelands where they gathered in mockery of civilization. Then, if one was brave or vapid enough to approach closer and be drawn within their spheres of activity, that unlucky traveler might begin seeing and experiencing more than was visible from afar. He might instead be drawn into the spectrally conjured mindscape of one spectre and then cross over into the personal hell of another, passing between their heavily congested territories. Suddenly he would realize that the landscape was not so barren in the eyes of the ghosts, and that a cobbled-together environment of multiple hauntings sprang up before him to be navigated like an ominous labyrinth of the damned, complete with fortifications so staunch and… 'improbable'…that living armies knew better than to try themselves against necropoli.

The kingdoms of the living gave these dead zones a wide berth, striking such regions from their maps of conquest as surely as if those tracts of earth had fallen into the sea and the geography had been permanently removed from mortal influence. It would be exceedingly difficult to find examples in the lore of a necropolis being successfully besieged, because by entering that decrepitude the invaders placed themselves at the mercy of ghost realm's altered reality, and the coldness of the spectral realm seeped into their bones, leaving them only a brief opportunity to return to the lands of the living before the change took hold and they joined the population of the necropolis permanently as its newest residents. Though popular legends tell of certain personages who walked the paths of the dead by way of stealth and emerged with rare treasures.

KILL METHOD: A NECROMANCER IS REQUIRED.

Only he may complete the breaking of these specters.

Otherwise… A _kill _method for the dead? Ha! They were beyond its icy touch and had become ensconced as a permanent feature of the ancient world. Deadkings were the equals of the greatest necromancers of the modern age. These two necrotic powers would ultimately meet in the Necromantic Wars.

But back before the advent of the necromancers, mages struggled to find effective strategies, and their best work was incomplete. Their research was divided into two main schools of thought, with some mages believing it was better to face the deadkings in the material realm while others felt it was preferable to fight them on spectral turf. But there was the constant danger of them pulling you kicking and screaming into the spectral realm with them regardless—deadkings pioneered the technique of appearing suddenly out of thin air and snatching away the souls of the living into their otherworldly dens like trapdoor spiders, leaving the victims' material bodies insensate on the floor like the empty husks they were. These corpses would often remain immaculate from decay as if they might return to life at any minute. Though that minute never came, with only the rarest of exceptions—those who were able to reawaken their bodies and walk again in the land of the living due to the efforts of heroes. These instances became the stuff of legend.

_Stun_: Spirit Wrack magic has no effect on the soulless, so the preponderance of Patron Species have nothing to fear from it. But upon Deadkings it has the effect of stunning them, as they have inarguably become spirits of some sort.

_Warding:_ Various wards and protections were developed by mages to counteract aggression from the dead. [To learn these spells, call forth the demon Μαγικά Παγιδεύω and petition it using the Δώρο binding rune altar. Employ the _extraction_ formula found in the indices of this codex labeled Maleficarum Demonae.] A proficient mage could expect to be relatively secure from harm in limited skirmishes with the dead, and rare objects and spells could even allow one to go on the offensive or to stand against entire hordes of spirits without being overrun. But against Deadkings the best these mages could hope for was a stalemate, or some exorcism-based respite, with their most successful strategy being to specially prepare a locale with wardings against any further incursion by the dead.

To illustrate the hopelessness of their overall situation, let us look at the Deadking Xrg, whose image is found scrawled in the caves east of the Lake of Lost Souls. Before he became a lich, Xrg had belonged to the Innovator species of patrons and could still call upon the shapeshifting ability of his former self in the ghost realm. Xrg combined this power with his mastery over spirits to morph into a god of death whose macabre torso and limbs incorporated the added mass of tonnes of slain bodies haphazardly stitched together into a singular behemoth. A thousand diminutive arms and faces were still emerging halfway from everywhere on Xrg's body to individually writhe, all of them reanimated by the spirits who had been compelled to partake in the abomination.

Monstrosities like this one are the Deadkings' equivalent of a demonic trueform. Xrg greeted the arrival of the defiant mage Kahlia with an iconic image: his gigantic maw opened wide to reveal a score of bodies roasting within. Kahlia recognized them as fellow mages from his order, slain yet kept fully aware as personified spirits. He would ultimately join their suffering.


	14. Bloodmages, The Origin of Vampires

Bloodmages

Ancestral Vampires. Cults of human sacrifice and heart removal once dominated the religious landscape, and before humans arose other species were used as fodder in the ancient world. It was a practice begun by the bloodmages and sustained by their mortal followers, all of it rooted in the very real power that was to be had through bloody sacrifice. You who sit in judgment of ancient peoples and view them as nothing more than superstitious savages: there is an undeniable _reason_ why human sacrifice held sway over your world for much longer than your current civilization has endured or will endure—the rewards were _**real**_ for those priests of death who partook! They were empowered in many ways. This was not an article of faith. Their subjects experienced the power directly—as thralls. The miracles obtained through human sacrifice were palpable, beheld by all as fact, and often the people experienced these boons themselves. As the tides wash your civilizations away, the time of such priests will come again.

Black blood runs through the veins of all Patron Species—all those who possess veins and are capable of bleeding, that is. The blood of the wicked is not a nourishing fluid; it contains none of the materials of life. The first vampires dabbled in this ichor, the blackened blood of their fellows, long before they ever turned their attentions to the living. The evil ones all knew Bloodmages as the patron type who could sustain themselves in battle indefinitely at the expense of their foes. Wound them and they would return themselves to full strength by sapping yours. They were the ravenous masters of savage deathlocks that, once cinched in, allowed them to drain the opponent of vitality completely unto death.

The predatory insect shape worn by Original vampires blended together the traits of mantids and beetles, though that description alone would not do it justice, for it was like no beetle you have ever seen: each of its three segments were molded from at least the body mass of a man and when behaving like a mantis it could rise up taller than any man to broadcast its spells through the air in the manner that rattlesnakes agitate and crickets generate sound. This dreadful cacophony would call out to all within range of its effect until the blood boiled inside of them. The victims' screams went unheard, drowned out by the last sound they would ever hear—that of the beast's toothed wing veins being agitated against each other to cast its magic far and wide. When stationary, it could expose these agitators for use by parting the protective elytra panels that covered its back. Resting on hind quarters and raising up its head and thorax, it spread the wing-like dorsal panels out to the sides so as to begin broadcasting a deadly serenade. As the sickly glow emanating from behind the monster gained lurid reddish intensity, those who were dying caught a glimpse of the creature's demoniacal true face which had been hidden on the underside of the beetle head but which was now raised up into full view as if to survey their demise.

But this was not the original vampires' weapon of choice. They were driven by a ferocious need to drain the enemy, and this led them to prefer a more visceral style of combat. To this end, a chitinous armor covered them, and in addition to the six legs they used for scurrying along walls and ceilings they also possessed four incredibly strong toothed combat arms that could be retracted and folded away against the body until the vampire called upon them in battle. Two of these functioned like the bladed forelimbs of a mantis, trapping prey between tibia and tarsus or slamming down heavily like the armored front limbs of a dreadnought that could bash, pierce, crush and shield. The other pair of these arms began lower down the body and lay flat against its underside so their tips emerged near the mouth and acted to bring food to the mouth like a spider's pedipalps; the entire length of these arms could also pull away from the body and be used to brutally grapple with opponents and lock them in a death grip. At that point, the opponent would be siphoned of his life's blood by the large quadruple teeth-like stingers which pierced down from the underside of the beast's abdomen. These could be driven in with great force to crack through body armor. The abdomen ended in two forked tail pincers inside the grip of which the vampire transported bodies or prisoners. Or, if so required by the exigencies of war, the vampire could also choose to siphon enemies dry with _blood shower_ spells or bites from either of its mouths—the demoniacal face, you recall, had an insectoid head joined to it and the two were used interchangeably depending on the vampire's current mode of operation. In your terms, when the creature was scuttling along the ground its insectoid head looked forwards and the other folded away underneath, and when the demonic head raised up the insectoid one peered skyward and formed the back of the demonic cranium. Poised upright this way, it appeared as if horns _shaped like the ears of a bat_ protruded from atop the vampire's skull, though in truth these were the mandibles of the insect mouth.

(When it came time to afflict the Ancients with a fitting curse, this batlike similarity was remembered and incorporated as a delicious irony. We made glorified bats of the Ancients, choosing this as the way in which the curse would pervert their avian nature. Though even then the vampires retained an incredible destructive capability as blood thieves, which returns us to the Originals…)

Stolen vitality became the commodity vampires traded in, hoarded, and fought over. While the health of a normal species depends the continued wellbeing of its body, the Vampires removed themselves from this dependency. Through use of the blood arts, they linked their state of health entirely to the store of vitality they had collected. Though a vampire's physical form may be reduced to a broken shambles, it matters not, so long as they retain a measure of the vital energy that governs their existence. Only when this is reduced to nil do they perish, nor do they diminish in capability before then, and as they grow richer again in that precious commodity the physical body mends to reflect their renewed vigor. This adaptation enabled them to defeat ostensibly stronger opponents whose normally lethal blows failed to dislodge a vampire as it set about draining its victim. Damage that should have crippled them in specific ways now only reduced their overall vitality and inflicted on them merely a generalized pain. This made the vampires fearless in battle as essentially they no longer suffered injuries and could learn to ignore the pain en route to gaining an advantage, sure in the knowledge that any vitality lost along the way could be regained through magnified aggression.

The truly remarkable trait of vampires was that _by glorying in carnage_ _they were able to gain back even more_ _vital essence than the amount they had lost_! This ability to unlock greater power by accessing the veins of others was incentive enough to make bloodmages among the most ferocious of combatants as they raced to maximize their development. If they had their way, there would be constant war, with them in the middle of the bloodshed as the dervishes who benefit most from eternal conflict, preferring it over victory. Even when other patrons had superior numbers they would usually avoid agitating these mages for fear that any numeric advantage might only fuel a juggernaut of vampiric ascendancy. The others would wait until they were confident in their ability to end the vampire quickly before the carnage spiraled out of control.

Whenever slaughter did spiral into chaos, the vampire inherited a treasure trove of vital essence from those slain. Some of this energy would go to augment the creature's permanent strength level, but just some, and only incrementally. What earned the bloodmages their name was how they were able to use the remainder of the pooled energies. This excess they devoted to the casting of legendary blood magics with a wide range of possible effects.

Ritually sacrificing other Patrons upon vampiric altars would focus the blood magic, channeling it down very specific paths. Once a casting's desired outcome was selected with this fine-tuning ritual, the magic could then be amplified by linking further carnage to it. Thousands of slayings might be channeled into powering a single spell as needed. Some magics were open ended so the bloodmages could build the spell's effect as strong as they wished, while other formulas were more exact and functioned like contracts which needed to be fulfilled before the magic would activate—a specified death toll was required to compel these magics into being. The magic worked by identifying and targeting certain blood markers, and the effects would then extend to all beings who fell within the spell's parameters. Some of the magics reached out with a great commonality to affect entire races, while others possessed extreme specificity and were meant to call down curses on individuals or particular bloodlines.

Alternately, those bloodlines could be propelled to greatness. By focussing the power inwardly they were able to accelerate their own form's development and even enjoyed some success at consciously determining the direction it took. You might say they were the inventors of evolution and that living organisms employ a poor imitation of the vampires' invention; where living ecosystems depend too much on random chance mutations and haphazard lines of development, the evolution of Patrons has been more directed, more relevant and ascendant. Vampires have even gone so far as to develop a bustling trade in the advancements they've acquired, spreading them through the population either by way of beneficent blood grants or through the murderous absorption of highly coveted abilities.

The mages tampered with the nature and potential of those entities they targeted. They opened doorways to all sorts of enhanced powers and twisted miracles, some of which even called upon the hellgods to appear and perform a service in return for the fulfillment of a massive blood contract. The vampires are known to have augmented some Legion Hives with this powerful bloodmagic, deemed _sacrificial summoning_. Such spells lie dormant in the veins of the patron legions, waiting for the day when enough of them are slain in battle that their fiery god is brought forth in angry reprisal, even unto a world with dimensional barriers in place that would normally bar Its entry. Lesser spells bestowed on warriors can enhance their strength or defense while yet alive, and are activated by violence, or by bleeding, or by more obscure triggers like runes drawn in blood. For this reason, _none can say just how many dormant and forgotten magics may yet adorn the veins of vampires themselves, even in their decline._ Vampiric rites could magnify all manner of spell powers. Blood magics are among the oldest in existence, and the amplified spells of original vampires were like continual emanations of sound that drowned out the more complex chants of the Sorcerers. This shielded the bloodmages from predation as the various patron species jockeyed for prestige in the early going, though the balance of power has since shifted several times.

When life first emerged, vampires were most enthusiastic of all the patron species in the rush to attack this new and unlimited source of flowing blood. _They eventually shed their original form and took on a humanoid shape to mimic their favored prey_. _The full potential of blood magic was only realized after vampires began to prey upon the life cycle._ As the blood of each generation of living beings flowed into their children's generation like a cascading fountain, vampires learned to harbor their spells within bloodlines so that the effects of their magics echoed down through the ages! The descendents of those cursed long ago remained spiritually branded. This allowed vampires to identify and define each living being by its lineage, at a glance. So while mortals knew each other merely by name, vampires eschewed this in favor of a more direct knowledge of the person's origins, along with the past transgressions or noteworthy accomplishments of his strain. Each lineage's past contact with vampires had left it marked with invisible _bloodscript_ symbols. Only the eyes of other vampires could conjure forth and read this sanguine imagery, seeing it superimposed over the living animal like a hemoglobin halo. These gory recordings were the beginnings of what would grow into a sea of vampiric _lore_ as their knowledge base was expanded by drips and drops, or by rivulets in the case of massacres. The history imprinted in this pooled-together lore still partially functions to inform modern vampires.

To the bloodmages, this set of hemoglobin markers was each creature's true name and definition, as well as the key to including that being in their magics. _An entire species might thus have limitations and weaknesses imposed onto their very nature by rippling blood magics _which spread fundamental changes through the gene pool. The wisdom of a people can be made to evaporate and their calm demeanor replaced with warlike impetuousness. _Thralldom_ can be sown into the cultural zeitgeist of a nation, resulting in its downfall. As its citizens answer the call within, they come under the sway of a greater power. And so forth.

_Even the evolutionary development of another species can be altered or reversed_. And this was done. The mages' power was far reaching and profound. Even they could not escape its touch in the end:

Tragically, the first vampires started down a path that would lead them to play a pivotal role in the Uprising. They fed on the living so continuously, and were so thoroughly seduced by the incremental gains in prestige which resulted, that they did not relent or even show concern when their own brackish plasma began to thin and be washed clean by constant infusions of living gore. Increasingly, they became what they consumed. A tinge of red appeared in their veins, then spread throughout, replacing the blackness that had flowed there prior. Their nature began to drift toward that of the ensouled mortals they fed upon, and something of those souls transferred to them along with the stolen vitality. Life was slowly contaminating the vampires.

Ultimately this prompted them to disassociate from the other patron species and join themselves to the life cycle, becoming mortal themselves and setting in motion a series of events that shattered the hegemony of patron species and ended the undisputed reign of evil. The vampires prized the ability to change their nature, and when the time came to transform themselves it was accomplished using the same powers of adaptation which had first enabled them to attach stolen vitality to their health gauge. However, _when the vampires entered into the state of change that took them from us, they did so at the urging of the holy, whose prophetic history the vampires were helping to fulfil_, which is why our own prophets were unable to foresee the defection as it was divinely orchestrated and part of the gods' blasted counterstrike against the Dark. With divine aid, the vampires would complete their transition into angelics and lead a charge that became more of an affront to hell than we had imagined possible.

That part of the tale is yet to come, along with how they were brought low into a wretchedness that mirrors their original incarnation as punishment for aspiring to become something more. Their accursed state also sunders them from the living condition, so do not dream of befriending these fallen ones and joining together to oppose the dark forces. The vampires of today have forgotten us, along with their lofty former ideals. Would you remind them? Doing so, you would only succeed in slaking their thirst, oh you whom they view solely as nourishment! It is your kind they hunt now, not ours, and you have not the authority to change that. To you they will not listen. Why should they hearken to the braying of chattel? So for now, all ye need know is how to vanquish these damned apostate souls—

KILL METHODS:

Choose an appropriate method for slaying the subtype of vampire that exists in your era.

I. DRAIN THE BODY, REMOVE & DESTROY HEART (ENERVATION OF ORIGINAL VAMPYRES)

II. DEFILE & DEPLETE (ANGELICS OF THE BYGONE ERA)

III. REMOVAL OF HEART TO AN ∞ DISTANCE (ALL TYPES)

IV. IMPALE THROUGH THE HEART (ACCURSED ONES)

V. CRUSHING BEYOND REGENERATIVE LIMITS (EFFECTIVE ON ALL)

VI. ESSENCE ABSORPTION (VAMPIRE VS. VAMPIRE )

VII. NECROMANCER (FOR PERSISTENT NECROTIC SPECIMENS)

_PARTIALLY EXTINCT METHODS:_

VIII. _ENERVATION_

IX. _SEVERING (DECAPITATION OF THE CURSED)_

X. _STARVATION_ (PETRIFIES MOST VAMPIRES)

XI. _IMMERSION (In Fire/Water/Sunlight) _(CURSED AND NECROTIC)


	15. Bloodmages, A Hunter's Guide

Bloodmages, A Hunter's Guide

* * *

I. DRAIN THE BODY, REMOVE & DESTROY HEART (ENERVATION OF ORIGINAL VAMPYRES)

II. DEFILE & DEPLETE (ANGELICS OF THE BYGONE ERA)

III. REMOVAL OF HEART TO AN ∞ DISTANCE (ALL TYPES)

IV. IMPALE THROUGH THE HEART (ACCURSED FALLEN VAMPIRES)

V. CRUSHING BEYOND REGENERATIVE LIMITS (EFFECTIVE ON ALL)

VI. ESSENCE ABSORPTION (VAMPIRE VS. VAMPIRE )

VII. NECROMANCER (FOR PERSISTENT NECROTIC SPECIMENS)

_PARTIALLY EXTINCT METHODS:_

VIII. _ENERVATION_

IX. _SEVERING (DECAPITATION OF THE CURSED)_

X. _STARVATION_ (PETRIFIES MOST VAMPIRES)

XI. _IMMERSION (In Fire/Water/Sunlight) _(CURSED AND NECROTIC)

_Immobilize:_ IMPALE / CAUSE CESSATION OF BLOODFLOW THROUGH THE HEART. (necromantic and original vampire types enter a state of suspended animation due to their vitality magic being disrupted.) (Impaling is lethal to "living" cursed vampires who opened themselves to death by becoming attached to the life cycle, and who were then weakened further by the curse.) Important: Should you encounter a necromantic vampire incapacitated by an implement stuck in its chest, do not clear the heart of this lest you desire the creature's company, as you will have surely quickened it back to life, or unlife as the case may be.

_Stun:_ INTENSE WAVES OF SOUND. When the pitch of the sound is tuned properly, it confounds some vampires' highly developed sonar. The curse corrupted the ancients' avian traits and caused them to devolve into a batlike nature. Blood gift vampires culled from other mortal species are still sometimes susceptible to being stunned with sound due to how the curse has carried over to them a vestigial remnant of this avian nature gone wrong, which their bodies' sensory organs then morph to accommodate over time.

_Confinement_: inside ENERGY BARRIERS works best. _Teleportation_ can be negated within an area, making a water-based imprisonment possible. Water and sunlight are already the metaphorical prison bars of the vampire curse…why not make them literally into prison bars? Some individuals may have evolved a variety of escape abilities, remember.

_Advanced Vampire Hunter Tactics_: Poison your blood to make the thief squeamish about draining you further. This can be done with standard poisons, followed in a timely manner with antidote, though there is a better way: If you are worthy of them, Sanctified Poisons exist that have been consecrated to cause no harm to the Hunter whose veins are attuned to carry them, but not so for the bloodthief who suffers greatly upon ingesting them! ;;;; Similarly, there is a rare _Sanctify_ spell that must be triggered at just the moment when one is losing blood to a vampire, before the undead fiend has had the chance to fully assimilate your lifeforce as part of its own. Casting the _Sanctify_ spell on yourself at that moment will also bless the stolen blood that has left your body, turning that blood into a holy weapon that burns in the veins of the vampire, often causing complete enervation and true death. These substances and magics are rumored to have been revealed to prophets by the holy, and access to them is tightly controlled by the religious Orders of the day. It seems the holy do not seek the extinction of all vampires with souls as we do; they still regard their former lackeys with some sympathy while at the same time acknowledging that vampires have degraded into rabid animals. So with reluctance the holy offer their lesser followers enough power to fend off the undead menace in times of extreme peril. ;;;; Use vampires against vampires. They are politically fractious and will often tear each other apart for very little reason. Many common human failings are magnified tenfold in vampire personalities. Let their egos be their undoing. ;;;; Some of the greatest hunters in history achieved their renown by working_ with _a cursed vampire and teaching him to recover the lost blood magic abilities that remain a part of his nature. Fueled by dreams of conquest, that vamp would then use his lore-based advantages to destroy many others of his kind, sometimes even turning the tables on Original vampires and using the bloodmagic against its inventors. However, what we want most is to keep fallen vampires ignorant of the blood magic. Empowering them to recover it is diametrically opposed to our wishes. This is why we keep Original Vampires on a short leash—so no modern blooddrinker can have a chance encounter with them and absorb their abilities to reawaken his own bloodmagic! So what chance do you think these hunters have when they defy our edict? The vast majority of Hunters who have practiced this brand of warfare were hunted down themselves by the hounds of hell, dragged into the netherworld and brought before our judges, whereupon they were damned, as will you be if you follow in their misguided tradition!

I. DRAINING & RENDING. (The Slaying of Original Vampires).

Not all of the first vampires were seduced by divinity. When the others underwent their uplift, some remained behind, remained as the soulless immortal patrons of evil they originally were, and they remain so even now. Bloodthirsty _without_ being cursed, they revel in gore not because they're compelled to but because they wholeheartedly choose it of their own accord. Unfortunately, Original Vampires suffer the stigma of being associated with the rest of their species who went on to become the turncoat angelic _Ancients_. For this, the remaining originals have endured persecution in hell where they are considered outcasts from Patron society and are treated as the _unclean_. They have since proven loyal to our satisfaction. (_**Whose magics do you think caused the ancient guardians to fail**_?) But out of spite we still occasionally hunt them for sport and we welcome you to do the same. Though there are some few original bloodmages who have stayed on as bipeds into the present time, the tremendous ill will toward anthropomorphic vampires has caused many more to revert back to their initial form, so most of our following suggestions will deal with how to fight that monstrous incarnation of vampire. Should you encounter Originals as humanoids, however, know that they will resemble fallen vampires but will be much hardier. They will not possess the same litany of weaknesses and you can distinguish them from the cursed ones by how their skins are tough as stone, making them nearly impossible to impale, and their faces will be more openly demonic. Those of you who are students of modern vampire art will already be familiar with the many depictions of these humanoid fiends which are found engraved on the tombs of cursed vampires to frighten spirits away. But they also appear there as a stubborn commentary on how the ancients were right to change their nature so long ago when they allied with the life cycle. The frightful images of Originals are a reminder that some immortality comes at too high a cost and that there _are_ things worth dying for. These depictions are also carved over archways to dispel evil thoughts from those who pass beneath. Speaking of evil thoughts…

Don't let an Original vampire succeed in using the _blood gout_ spell on you! This will give it a sample of your blood with which to work its most lethal spells. It will then be able to name you as the target for a version of _Blood Boil_ which you cannot escape no matter how far you distance yourself from the mage. There is no safe distance now that the casting has been keyed to your soul! In time, it would also be able to weave a sovereign _Thralldom_ that could compel you to stumble defenselessly into the creature's cold embrace. The monster could also initiate a _continuous draining_ of your veins, the way that Archons are known to drain a continuous stream of spiritual energy; this threat is particularly deadly when the vampire's _protect_ spell is active so you cannot physically strike it to end the thievery. Understand that once your blood has been gouted, you have been _Marked _by that soulless bloodmage for inclusion in vampiric lore. You must slay that mage before it can share your droplet of lore with the rest of its brood. If that was to occur, their advantage over you would become permanent. Any and all bloodmages you encountered in the future would be able to immediately target you with their more terrible spells. Fighting them becomes much tougher from then on, as your life would constantly depend on being able to interrupt their spellcasting each and every time.

Interrupting them once they start casting spells is a trick you can become quite skilled at, but it is an unreliable art form you don't want to have to gamble on repeatedly. First of all, you will have to get in position to strike the vampire's back in some way, and as you try to go around to the side of it, the stationary vampire will swivel whichever way it has to in order to keep you in front of it. Trying to leap over the top will get you swatted down. _Slow Time_ to outpace its rate of turning, then climb on the beast and physically hack away until its concentration is ruined. Or use a _Speed Dash_ ability to strafe around the vampire in a circle. In fact, the prudent vampire hunter will do this at the start of the battle even before he needs to, because by having covered that ground ahead of time he will then be able to _teleport_ behind the vampire and quickly hit its exposed back with a _bolt_ spell as needed. If you are armed with both hyper-fast sprinting speed and the _constrict_ ability, making a fast revolution around the monster is often the perfect counterattack; the circular slap of inbound constriction energy not only dispels the bloodmagic, it also immobilizes the vampire for several precious seconds. This is also one of the few ways to defeat the _protect_ spell Originals will sometimes generate around themselves. Once they raise this barrier, you will be unable to physically reach them to stop the bloodmagic countdown! When fighting multiple originals, stay alert in case one of them clambers up onto a wall and tries to cast its spells from a hidden perched location. Hit these with _bolts_.

After sustaining enough damage the bloodmagic agitators become useless and the creature folds its protective elytra flaps down over them again for safety. Now done with spell casting, it will not open these again by choice, and at this point you are unable to pry them apart, but your goal will be to clear them away and root around deeper in that damaged tissue until you can impale the thing through its back. Obviously, in the meantime it will rely on its bull rush, so be ready to dodge or to fight from behind cover. Pinned underneath a bloodsucker is no place to be.

However, this _is_ the time when you must face the vampire head on. You must brave the beast's vicious forelimbs until you can use a _fury_ _strike_ to crack its sternum. Once the centrally located cross-ribs that cover the vampire's heart are broken, it will lose muscle control of its forearms. At that point, you can go in close to pry a gaping hole in the vampire's chest by forcing the upper and lower halves of the broken ribs apart. Rearranging the beast's bone structure like this will leave bone spurs jutting up from its shoulders as if it were in the act of sprouting skeletal wings. These exposed bone spurs will be of use to you soon. It is still too early to pull the heart out of its chest, though. The vampire would respond by flattening its belly against the ground to crush you under its weight before then going for a leisurely stroll which you'd enjoy even less. What you will need to do next is go around behind the slowed and weakened beetle fiend whose wing flaps you can now pull open. (This makes both the front and back of the vampire vulnerable, so that an impaling blow will pass all the way through to the other side, removing the heart from the body and rending it to kill the monster instead of merely immobilizing it.)

Next, choose the manner in which you will stake the vampire. You might grab hold of an upper cross-rib section and pull back on it until it snaps like a wish bone. Then fulfil your wish by using it as a massive stake to drive in through the vamp's back until it (and the heart impaled upon it) are seen extending several feet beyond the open chest cavity. Or an adventurous slayer with enhanced leaping abilities might position himself at some distant point behind the vampire and launch into the air in the hopes of catching one of the idle mantis forelimbs while in flight and using the leap's downward momentum to drive that curved scimitar arm into the exposed chest cavity, crumpling the monster onto itself and leaving the mantis limb protruding out the creature's back. Experiment to find other variations of this kill, such as first immobilizing the vampire by impaling it from the front before _then_ opening the wings and finally leaping onto the vampire's back to drive its thorax down onto the impalement. This way, the battle ends with you being washed in a celebratory explosion of blood when the stake erupts out the monster's back. Always rend the heart. As the vampire's gore drains out from the gaping chest wound, it dies from Enervation.

II. DEFILING A HOLY ANCIENT

No winged Ancients should exist in your time period. Should you ever encounter a blessed vampire who does not bear the curse, it would be of utmost importance that you contact the Defilers about this immediately: summon the Στο τέλος δόξα. If your claim turns out to be legitimate and we have you to thank for helping to thwart a rogue band of timestreaming Ancients, the bounty for their capture would be paid to you in _magnitude_ by The Terrors themselves! We would make of you a godling. That is how seriously we take this threat. The method used by _Defilers_ to dispose of Ancients is not a power mortals can contain. You are children of the stars; yours is the very substance which _defiling_ magics seek to corrode. So this kill method remains under our control and will not be discussed here. Though rare cursed relics are reputed to impart such powers upon he who wields them, their use is not…. advisable.

III. REMOVAL OF HEART TO AN INFINITE DISTANCE

This method strikes at the vitality magic that sustains a vampire. Let us explain the miracle of the vampire heart: it is the junction point between the physical body and the supernatural entity that inhabits that body. In the profane physical world you live in, blood is simply blood. It is not a supernatural source of instant healing. It only becomes this after flowing through the vampire heart. The heart is the crossroads between worlds. It joins together the physical and metaphysical. It takes the _natural_ plasma which sustains you and transmutes this into the _unnatural_ vitality which sustains the vampire. The heart is the equals sign in a multidimensional equation. So by removing the heart from the equation, everything falls apart. We explode the vampire. But for this to work we must _erase_ the heart, not simply separate it from the creature. Their vitality magic continues to function over any distance, even a world away. _Some original vampires even remove their hearts as a precaution before they travel to dangerous planets! This makes them as close to invincible as vampires get, though a mage who knows _Heart Seeker_ will sometimes make quick work of them. _How are vampires able to do this? The distance is finite. As you will learn, the hell dimensions are not infinitely distant from the material realm but were once part of it, and energies still pass through the thin dimensional walls. No, in order for heart removal to kill a vampire, the heart must be banished to a closed dimension. A truly isolated extradimensional space. You might summon a Coruscator to perform this service… There are _containers_ one can place a vampire heart into to snuff out its life force utterly. Not by accident, many patrons use such objects to decorate their private hearths and shrines. Other similar phylacteries are capable of summoning the rest of the vampire's body to appear around the heart, made whole again… At other times, non-lethal extradimensional spaces have been used to hide the heart from scrying eyes... Many a vampire has been forced into servitude after their heart fell into the possession of another patron who threatened to use this kill method to snuff the bloodmage unless it complied… And the bloodmages themselves are the true masters of this art of heart removal. They founded the practice and are more fully aware of its potential applications than anyone. Some of their miracles may not yet be known to us.

IV. IMPALE THROUGH THE HEART (BLOOD GIFT)

This is the preferred way of ensuring the undead have been put to death. Preferably, hoist them high and keep them under observation for signs of continued struggling. Also, check to see that the body is showing _additional_ decay beyond that which was already present when the thing yet stalked the night. If the amount of decay does not increase, you have not slain the vampire. It has either adapted its body to overcome a death by impaling, or more likely you failed to strike its heart through, or it is not a blood gift vampire with whom you deal at all! Rather it is one of the greater subspecies attempting to pass itself off as belonging to a lesser vampiric branch. Do not remove the stake. _Add to it_.

V. CRUSHING

Destroys the heart. Prevents bloodflow which might regenerate the body. Smashes the physical form past any chance of recovery, exceeding the limits of that vampire's regenerative powers. The remaining blood either evaporates or coagulates, becoming useless. If there is a soul, it tears loose of the remains easily. And in this case, it leaves definitively, with even necromantic vampires experiencing no bounce-back into life after the weight is removed. Note: Crush them using extreme weight to get these results. Consider carefully what you will use to flatten them—if a rockslide entombs a vampire but the rubble only encapsulates its body without actually pulping the creature, it will survive immobilized. Also note that, while no instance has been reported of a bloodmage surviving a true pulping, this method is still somewhat suspect for two reasons: one, it is rarely employed, and two, vampires are trending toward ever greater regenerative capability. This means the day is coming when crushing will no longer overpower a vampire's ability to heal itself. We forecast that this kill method will eventually have to be shifted over to the Partially Extinct table of techniques. Some specimens may already be resistant. We just have no way of knowing due to how rarely this technique is used. For the time being, though, crush away!

VI. ESSENCE ABSORPTION (VAMPIRE VS. VAMPIRE)

When two or more members of this species duel to the death, the result is perhaps the crown jewel of all mortal combats. These duels elevate to a level of martial artistry beyond that seen from any other species. Vampires up their game significantly when squaring off against their own. Deep-seated instincts take over and drive the bloodlust within them past the boiling point. They sense the reward that awaits the victor and their overall speed and reflexes accelerate wildly. It is such a spectacle to see that we have on many occasions forced captured bloodthieves to fight gladiatorial battles for the bemusement of hell's populace. Decadent vampire lords have done the same! In many of their own regimes, the masters of broods have historically pit underlings against one another for sport. And for education. If one of the brood has reached Count or Baron status by developing new abilities in secret, the vampire Overlords will want to know what these hidden strengths are before they themselves become threatened by him or her. If the evolutionary secrets of this vampire cannot be learned through other means, then it is forced to reveal its abilities in battle while under observation. Also, for such a visceral species, watching and partaking in these public death matches is part of staying sharp. It comes naturally as part of their gory milieu.

When one bloodthief drains another to death, a piece of its essence is often torn loose and this transfers to the victor along with the last of the loser's vitality. This means a vampire knows with surety when it has killed via enervation, whereas a human hunter who has whittled down a vampire's energy to nil _cannot_ _know_ with certainty whether it is truly dead and should verify his enervation kills by burning the carcass.

Abilities can be absorbed from one fiend to another by way of this last second essence migration. Absorbing the powers of others is the vampiric equivalent to how some tribal warriors collect scalps from those they have slain. The actual martial art practiced when two vampires clash is a marvel to behold, in part because much of the battle takes place at speeds too fast for the eye to follow. Entire texts have been devoted to the nuances involved, such as Xerephon's Tooth and Nail, yet none of these works have captured in print even half of the complex variables that determine who wins these contests. Each battle unfolds differently, but the most common factors that determine the winner are: the lore differential between combatants, their skill at _shadowplay_ and hyperspeed grappling, whether one can surprise the other with an unfamiliar combat mode or shapechange, whether one's dark evolution matches up poorly against the other's particular skill set (making him a _warrior of misfortune_), using the surrounding environment as a weapon, advantageous mid-battle feeding while denying this to the other, and whether one outclasses the competition in terms of his mana reserves or spell repertoire.

But as we are not in the business of improving the skills of vampires, this codex will give no in-depth look at these combat nuances. This text was not intended for a vampiric audience, and to ensure that you are not one….Βαμπίρ μάτια πρέπει να καύσει στο τους άθλιες κρανία ανάγνωση αυτό. Death to the dead!

VII. NECROMANCER

Some there are who have become _death lords_, for whom no remedy exists short of calling upon the Necromancer to at last bring final cessation to their shambling bones with his awesome authority over all things dead. These specimens will have overcome the normal weaknesses of their species or will have found ways of skirting 'round these weaknesses so that they no longer prove lethal. For those fiends who have surmounted all other forms of death, let the Death Guardian call them to the grave and make them lay down in it and be still. _None_ of the necrotic lords are immune to this final censure.

_THE PARTIALLY EXTINCT METHODS:_

VIII. _ENERVATION_

This applies to the weakest of blood gift vampires, those culled from other species to replace the ancients as they diminished. These may sometimes be slain through simple exhaustion and the normal wounding that slays mortals. They suffer a death of 1000 cuts, or in most cases nowhere near so many as 1000. The _whelp, gimp _and_ bride_ prestige classes have so little stamina that a properly trained and armored mortal warrior can succeed in erasing their entire store of vitality. Vital essence is the gauge by which a vampire' health is measured, and when they are wounded repeatedly without having a chance to feed, this gauge lowers to nil and they cease to be. Many times, though, hunters have presumed too much, and an entity they thought was slain rose up again. Many times more, hunters relying on this method missed their chance to stake the vampire and saw it escape from them using an unnatural means of transport. This is why we do not recommend enervation alone. Combine this approach with _confinement_ and immersion or impaling to see better results. The fiends escape too often otherwise. Some have taught themselves to instinctively trigger a flockform transformation when their health ebbs low enough. Others repair to their _sanctuary_. It simply will not do.

IX. SEVERING

Originally, the vitality magic that keeps a vampire intact was broken upon decapitation or when their body was drawn and quartered into several pieces. This weakness arose from how vampires had redesigned themselves: they keyed their energy reserves to sustain a _single_ magically defined entity. The magic could not abide any splintering of that entity. They could not recover from severed limbs which allowed their vitality to _drain_ out and prevented their regenerative properties from functioning. To solve for this, bloodmages leeched the veins of shapeshifters and blended that blood with their own until they took on some of the properties of those creatures. Thereafter, wounds in vampiric flesh closed and healed nigh on instantaneously, and they used shifter tricks to recover severed flesh. A phase change to gaseous form could undo decapitation. If rendered into numerous shards, their bodies would transform into just as many or more smaller life forms governed by a flock mentality capable of fleeing to safety and later gathering to recombine. _**Note**_: in latter days, as the state of vampires continues to decline and devolve, this _severing_ weakness of old may reemerge to afflict them anew. You could perhaps succeed in killing them this way. Do not gamble on it, however. Always make sure of their demise.

X. _STARVATION_

Petrification through extreme hunger. Legends tell of vampires being locked away in caves, dungeons or cellars until they became dust. Each subtype and individual starves at its own rate and differs in how long it can remain desiccated before truly dying. Until that point, a petrified condition is _reversible by immersion in blood_. Note that the corpses of angelics would remain immaculate and did not petrify. Also, do not be fooled by a vampire who petrifies upon entering the state of change, or by one who has evolved the ability to hibernate during long periods of drought when there is no opportunity to feed. This hibernation state shuts down the vampire's system before extreme hunger and fatigue set in. Desiccation never actually claimed the body—the fiend is not dead. Test a vampire corpse by chipping off a piece and immersing it in blood to check it for the gradual softening of its tissues. There should be no change overnight. If you cannot chip any slivers off of the body to conduct the test with, that vampire has already tested positive for signs of 'life'—its vitality magic is still actively preventing you from splintering its form, which is unnaturally preserved whole and intact for the day of its awakening. Given long enough, even immobilized necromantic vampires will decay to the point where their souls can no longer bounce back into a body that is too far gone. You will see large portions of such a body have broken off and turned to dust.

_XI. IMMERSION (BLOOD GIFT & NECROMANTIC)_

The blood curse imposes a state of unlife upon vampires and forcibly removes them from the presence of SUNLIGHT, which is the source of life, and from WATER, the cradle of life. And their bodies no longer generate warmth like one feels coming from living organisms because the undead are denied the FIRE of life which is heated by internal combustion. By confronting a vampire with these basic elements of the life force and immersing the creature in them, you bring it into harmful contact with the very things denied it by the curse. They can be drowned and burned to death, though the wise will tell you that vampires burn and drown in a different manner than the bodies of living creatures. It is not their lungs that drown but their entirety, and fire races through them as if they burned from the inside out. This is because they are burning or drowning for different _reasons_ than the living do. But be aware that vampires are gradually surmounting these weaknesses. Their mature forms walk in the light and in the rain. There are vampire lords who have developed resistance to fire. And the water weakness is destined to be overcome by a very particular soul who will pass through a watery barrier to see deeper into the forbidden mysteries of life than any who has ever lived. If given the chance, vampires would continue this trend and eventually overcome all immersion weaknesses, so that in the fullness of time the oceans would teem with vampiric forms as the curse was beaten back by the persistence of dark evolution. Luckily, the future development of vampires is destined to come to an abrupt halt long before that dreadful point is reached. Of this we are certain. Nevertheless, present day vampire hunters should be wary of individual creatures who have grown resistant to immersion in the elements. It is no longer a surefire technique.

In the end,

Do whatever

You will

To them,

So

Long

As

They

Suffer.


	16. Serpentines & Elementals

Serpentine

Known as the Culture Bearers. Slithering on large diameter snake bellies, occasionally winged, the head and torso of these creatures blend together the features of the snake and humanoid. Imagery of them litters the oldest temples on many worlds. Their torsos are replete with multiple sets of arms which have proven equally capable of carrying both weapons _and gifts_ over the ages. They are horrid to behold but possess soothing voices and only rarely shapechange into pleasing forms as they seem to relish forcing others to grapple with the disparity between their wicked appearance and the seductive tones they use to deliver their message. It is as if the greatest part of their victory is how their victims are ultimately made to ignore the plain truth before their eyes, so taken are they by the proffered lies. Serpent People functioned as the Culture Bearers of the ancient world, so it is to teaching and gift-giving that they have most often devoted themselves, and not to violence. Though their gifts come with a price not fully understood by the recipients until long after...

Serpentines appear when new races are still in the early stages of acquiring sentience. They act as mentors at a time when the younger race is most suggestible. When new sapient beings are just starting to rise above the animal kingdom and are still almost indistinguishable from beasts, the Culture Bearers emerge from nearby marshes and riverbeds to raise these cultures up and civilize them, anointing them with the gifts of language and fire as well as the social and ethical concepts upon which their civilizations will ultimately be based. Some of the earliest cults rose up around these Serpents, and in time those serpent cults grew into cultures, the modern societies, all tracing back to the serpentines.

While it is true that these molded cultures benefit in many ways from serpentine influence, it is also true that they have been tampered with from the start so that all the future growth and development of those civilizations will be stunted and skewed in predicable ways. The seeds of evil have been sown directly into the way they define their civilization. The victims are forever led off course by the warped concepts initially fed them by the Serpentfolk. They will continue to harm each other but are rendered harmless to us; We have beaten the Holy by getting to that civilization first and determining the upper limit of that race's potential before it can be uplifted by divine hands.

Humans were one such species tampered with in this way. When the Serpents taught men the ways of the world, men swallowed all at face value. Their thought pathways became warped and ingrained with the prejudices and bad habits that remain a part of mankind into the present day. In most cases these misled civilizations are doomed never to rise above the limitations imposed on them by that original template of civilization they were so awed and overjoyed to receive from their benign malefactors. Though, millennia later, their subconscious has come to suspect the truth of what happened to them in those distant swamps, and many men and women experience a profound revulsion upon encountering serpents of any kind.

KILL METHOD: WRITHING COMBAT

It's possible to kill them in other ways, perhaps with spells such as _immolate_, etc., but you don't always have enough spell power for all the nasties who show up, so for those times you have to do it the hard way, here 'tis:

You _can_ cut them down with repetitions of normal weapon attacks... it is _possible_ to do this, but exceedingly difficult unless you've got your axes spinning fast to make up for all the serpent's extra arms. Anyone attempting a frontal assault on a Serpentine is likely to be clobbered. It is like confronting an enemy on horseback who is armed not with one mace but with many, who can strike from both sides and from odd angles, raining down blows from above in quick succession to pinball their foe helplessly back and forth until the barrage ends with an impaling or some other manner of death blow. So you will need to get on the Serpentine's back after you _slow time_ or otherwise slow them down, because their arms flail fast and well-coordinated when they're at full strength. Find a way to bypass their defensive ready stance. Somehow create a stun effect to change the status quo, perhaps by employing spell powers or by using the environment against the lizard, or by successfully going toe-to-toe with the beast, so to speak, until you dizzy it.

Once you've made yourself speedier than the snakelord, jumping onto its back initiates a contest of speed, agility, wit, and coordination as you slalom from one of its arms to another like a monkey swinging from vine to vine, dodging its slowed strikes and injuring its arms as you go. Or, when more than one of the Serpentfolk opposes you, it may be necessary to slingshot yourself from the back of one serpent onto another the way a comet's course slingshots it from the gravity of one planet to the next. This can be done as an act of desperation when the first serpent's arms are closing in on you and you are about to run out of evasive options and get caught. The many arms all play defence as you circumnavigate them, and while you attempt to incapacitate the arms one at a time they are attempting to strike you and thus break your rhythm, at which point they can begin turning the tables on their assailant, ultimately converging to trap and hold you in place for a fatal _constriction_ delivered by the snake's main body. So lunging from serpent to serpent can be a survival move, but a hyper-aggressive attacker will also sometimes _choose_ to lunge from one opponent onto the back of another because of the added chaos this brings to the battlefield as he continues to rack up damage on a large throng of Serpentfolk.

After you disarm/sever/clear out all their combat limbs, something is left vulnerable. One winning strategy is to clear away the two lower sets of arms which sprout from further down the sides of the serpent's body, leaving intact the "first" set of arms (those closest to the head). Now that the other arms are no longer in a condition to stop you, grab the remaining top arms from behind and force the weapons they hold into the humanoid head atop the snake body, pulping or impaling it using overpowering strength. Do you begin to fathom why the greatest martial artists have historically tested themselves against this adversary as the final validation of their skill? And such skill you will need, because the lizard lord is not defeated yet at this point but merely enraged!

The humanoid head is not the real one, you see. The entire anthropomorphic torso atop the snake body is functional, of course, but it exists almost purely for show. This torso's purpose is that it gives sentient creatures something to identify with so that they will listen as the Culture Bearer pollutes their minds. Now that you have ruined the illusion of this secondary head, the creature will abandon it to death and you can expect the real head to burst forth shortly. We strongly suggest holding on tight during the interregnum as the creature writhes in agony and prepares to violently shed the portion of its body that was a deception. It is much preferable to remain atop the creature so that you will already be in position to kill it after the true head emerges. Trust us, this is better than jumping clear or allowing yourself to be flung from the snake, as you will then have to battle the reptilian head with its fearsome maw. You would be shocked to discover the blinding speed of the monster's true bite attack, not to mention the horrifying distance that this strike can cover. A man can stand upright within the open mouth, and you do not want to test your strength against this mouth as it crumples you. Better to remain behind the beast and not in front of it so that your miserable form is never even sighted by this true reptilian head when it appears.

Luckily, you will discover that newfound handholds now exist to keep you from being thrown from the serpentine as it writhes: these handholds were, only moments ago, the upper arms of the lizard which you forcibly bent until their blades jammed into the creature's false head. They remain stuck there, just so. Lock your own arms in place inside the serpent's bent elbows and see if you can't use them like the reins of a horse to steer the writhing serpentine! The pain of pulling the blades this way or that through its skull may spur it to smash the ground in that direction. See if you can direct its flailing and send it to attack other nearby enemies or use its mass to pulverize barriers blocking your path. You can pull back severely to cause the serpent to whip around and tail-slap in a sweeping arc. This decimates crowds of smaller enemy scrubs if you're in a crowd. Be wary though, because this _monster steering_ technique is being greatly overused by heroes these days, and when you steer the serpent's rampage too intently you risk alerting the monster to your exact location on its carapace. This has ended badly for certain heroes who were instantaneously devoured by the monster's true head as it burst forth from beneath the very torso to which you now cling. So there is a cautionary tale here. To survive the experience, do not be overly greedy in how you spur the serpent on; cause some destruction and then bow out gracefully.

The Serpentine's thrashing concludes when it jettisons its upper humanoid portion in an explosion of violently discarded flesh. This transmutes its previous torso into a rain of blood and viscera, like a flash-molting from hell. If you've held on, you're riding high now because the serpent rears up to full height like a charmed cobra in order for the true head to emerge. This works well for you for two reasons: you don't have to worry about being devoured and you have access to the vulnerable spot that has emerged right near you at the nape of the newly visible lizard cranium. You can impale that spot and use your weight + gravity to make your weapon rip a decisive gash down the snake's back from head to tail as you slide down a grisly elevator. After that, if anything, it's just thrashing at ground level, incapacitated.

If you are fool enough to be thrown from the serpentine's back, or if you are forced to fight the reptilian trueform in honest combat (when it is ready for you), then we wish your soul repose for you will surely die. Some few notable warriors have beaten the odds by tricking the snake into breaking its jaw, sometimes on boulders that were interposed twixt them and the giant snake as they dove for safety. On occasion the snake's maw has been pinned open (or locked shut) with a well-timed lance, a suddenly expandable/collapsible weapon, or force fields. Once the serpentine was stunned, these heroes climbed onto it to perform the kill instructions given above. As a final warning, some wily serpentines will reveal their true face even before they are forced to do so. They will surprise you with this in hopes of gaining a strategic advantage, especially if they have witnessed you slaying a number of their fellows and wish to avoid the same fate.

* * *

Elementals

Elemental forms were a vital step in the process of abysmal entities learning to cross over into the material world. By experimenting with the manipulation of elemental forces, these patrons mastered the building blocks of matter and were able to inform demons of the basic principles of physics. Elementals steered the ancestral ones toward effective physical manifestations. Because of elemental research, demons gained entry points into the material plane and made significant progress toward the goal of becoming overlords here as we once were in the abyss. In recent ages, the elementals are of diminished importance, as demons have surpassed them in complexity. They are like relics of a time gone by. But, since this tale tells the story of that distant past when elementals were indeed more prominent, you will soon learn of them and the role they played on Nosgoth's grandest stage.

Sylphs (air), Salamanders (fire), Undines/Nymphs (water), and Geodes/Maanalaiset (earth) are their classes. All eagerly pursued their interests, the primary agenda being to interact with the world and conduct experiments involving their chosen element. Something curious happened when they encountered other entities, however: they expanded their experiments to include those beings and _their_ ideas, drawing upon any new source of inspiration they could find.

The result? It was possible for an outsider to impress an elemental and bind its will to his own purpose, tasking it to perform duties that suited both parties. Great works were accomplished in this way, and great abuses perpetrated as well. The binding of elementals became a very seductive notion to the residents of Nosgoth, who surmised that these beings could open the door to all manner of material accomplishments, even those ambitions of the captor that the elemental did not share. Some sought to keep elementals bound after the completion of the contract and compel them to labor against their will. In truth, _all_ work must be accomplished through the interplay of the elements, but these creatures were capable of such exacting control and artistry that their manufactures were a quantum leap beyond what mortals could hope to achieve as architects, sculptors, smiths, farmers, sailors, and rulers whose souls had creativity enough but lacked the skill to turn their dreams into reality.

By marrying their ambition to the Elementals' vast talent and tireless productivity they were able to produce many of the wonders of the ancient world. Fortifications so advanced, some of them, that they continue to outclass all that has been built since. Aerated cities at the bottom of lakes. Or ones perfectly irrigated with canals as their thoroughfares, yet they did not sink. Impossible plateaus of rock elevated up above the plains on such narrow concave supports that they could not be scaled by any art of rock climbing, atop which a winged race might build an eyrie unassailable by their foes. Citadels hewn in the shapes of skulls, dragons, and the weapons of deities. Sylphs provided electromagnetic wonders as well as wind to fill the sails of conquerors, and their touch even served as makeshift wings for their masters, while they also notably provided lift for some decidedly non-aerodynamic objects which would never have been seen aloft without their aid.

However, not all elementals were as receptive. As proof that their temperaments range over a wide spectrum, many elementals were also responsible for the calamities of the ancient world. These ones sought vengeance on their captors by burning forests or deluging the land or sending targeted hurricanes and quakes to shatter the foundations of palaces they had been forced to build. Sometimes, they did this even without provocation.

KILL METHOD: FORCEFUL DISPERSION. A death by dissociation into particles. Or execute them via ELEMENTAL BALANCING RITUALS.

The average dispersion event is not actually lethal to an elemental, but only a temporary effect. Their energy transfers and they later reform. Historically a particularly powerful dispersion blow has been required to annihilate them completely. It must be a strike that does not allow their escape through the transfer of their vital energy... Alternately, they could be ritually slain via their balancing element; this was an exorcism from which they rarely returned:

Fire: to be suffocated (enclosed in earth).

Earth: shattered, ground up and dispersed onto the waves.

Air: burned in an enclosure, whether magical or otherwise.

Water: evaporated into an enclosure of ensorceled air.

If you have seen vampire temples enshrined with images of water or fire drakes or the like, then you have beheld elementals in their warlike visage. They were much to be feared in these incarnations. Such carvings are remembrances of a time gone by when these species were allied with the fanged ones and they sheltered together and looked after one another during the great upheaval. No more.


	17. Coruscators & Colossals

Extradimensionals

The Coruscators. Like the cuttlefish mesmerizes its oceanic prey with scintillating displays of color sent rippling over the entire surface area of its luminescent skin, these _cuttlefiends_ open wondrous rifts to extradimensional space to amaze their _intelligent prey_ with an incomparable show of spatial distortion effects and brilliant colors that normally don't exist in this universe. They can then leisurely manipulate those same infinitely sharp spatial fields to tear the victim apart, or expose them to weightlessness, vacuum, or the atmospheric effects of other dimensions and their foreign physics. Alternately, a portal in space might be used to abduct their quarry and disappear, or to transport many willing accomplices _anywhere_. Motes of warped space can be made to orbit the fiend like knives against which armor is useless. Additionally, one of its striking limbs acts as _a banishment hammer_.

They are perfectly defended against physical threats by a sphere of spatial shielding that shreds all matter it comes into contact with, as if the entire surface of it were the spinning singularity of a black hole. Floating slowly through midair in an atmospheric world, for instance, it may appear vulnerable yet it is nonetheless equally in no danger from either a shrapnel weapon or a falling mountain: Both would simply disappear as they contacted the field without causing any recoil for the creature upon 'impact.'

These Coruscators are the chief extradimensionals and are largely responsible for the Patrons being able to travel and extend their dominion to all climes. In order to survive the demands of all the various environments they must pass through, the Extradimensionals' shape and surface area long ago became a highly adaptable amalgam of qualities, the best possible compromise form. This means they are far from bipedal and are not truly at home in any one environment. But they can and do roam through all climes, not suffering the restricted habitat boundaries usually seen in specialized forms because they are specialized in so many ways that they are paradoxically ready for anything and therefore enjoy the widespread success of a more generalized form.

They wear alien bodies of a disturbingly capable design that bespeaks having been around forever, and successful forever, as one intuitively feels about the forms of sharks and alligators on your world, only more so. It makes all other animal designs seem simplistic by combining the best aspects of beasts from at least 8 different realms of existence, blending a circlet of sensory stalks together with the carapace of a crab, sleek cephalopod feelers, an antigravity urchin's float ability, vacuum-ready armor and an extendable stellar sail, poison-marked skin coloration patterns, a _sinkstone_ desolidifier, and the capacity to withstand extreme gravities. It relies on its multiple-medium gills only in emergencies, preferring to breathe by opening tiny dimensional rifts within its lungs that pump in breathable atmospheres from distant worlds as needed.

Out of necessity, many extradimensionals have been bound to the will of Enslavers to ensure their gates stay reliably operable through the ages, since they provide the multidimensional gate network used by most of the patron species.

KILL METHOD: TELEKINETIC IMPLOSION.

NO METHOD EXISTS IF REINFORCED BY DEMIS (see below).

Those capable of reaching past its shielding and imploding the internal organs of the creature will find among them the organs responsible for regulating spatial fields. Once it loses control of field generation, the creature is no different than any other object and will be sliced into nothingness by its own weapon. Their demise can be quite memorable, depending on whether they implode into a single point or are shorn into fragments that float free as if time has frozen in the vicinity. The surrounding area will often remain as nonstandard space for quite a while, replete with dangers such as frozen time, mini-singularities, and pockets of alien atmospheres. Note: strategically important gates and their attendant creatures have been reinforced against implosion by decree of the demigods. All past attempts to slay these elite gatekeepers bolstered by the power of the demis have failed, though there were some successes in taking the gates temporarily offline using a multi-step process involving the clever application of planar portals.

_Warding_: these _travelers_ can be prevented from appearing inside of a warded area, similar to the technique used to defend against specters. Castles and homes of the wise are guarded in this way, and historically perimeters of all sorts have been warded. Marching armies have even carried standards magicked with wards to safeguard their advance.

And if thou shouldst lack the refined telekinetic prowess needed to crush the _traveler_, a more difficult road must be traveled in order to defeat the monster:

THE LEGEND OF SORNATH is the most infamous example found in lore of the slaying of an extradimensional being. This Sornath was a mage from a bygone era who went on the wildest of rides through the far corners of the universe as he and the Coruscator fought. All other travel adventures and abduction stories pale in comparison. First, he used a planar portal to appear inside the creature's shielding. The fiend sent circling knives of warped space to attack the hero, who dodged, and the area inside the shielding became a bubble of foreign physics which the hero had to contend with as he tried to strike the creature's weak points.

Once injured, the dimensional traveler tried to flee to the safety of another dimension, but the mage went along for the trip as if holding on with a jugular bite, though in truth he was holding tight for dear life to prevent being horrifically stranded in some godforsaken place where no living thing could survive. The creature raced through a variety of dimensions in the attempt to throw off the attacker, while Sornath summoned a Protect spell as a buffer against the worst effects of the those alien climates. And as they appeared in each new dimension the hero had only a few moments to survey the nature of the new environment and choose the appropriate elemental spell with which to counteract it!

So if they appeared in a vacuum, the air spell provided needed breath. If they arrived in a hell dimension that was aflame, the water spell afforded a brief respite. If a realm frozen near to absolute zero assailed Sornath's protective barrier, he knew to ignite the fire spell to prevent total immobilization. When they appeared inside a crystalline matrix, the earth spell allowed his body to pass through its next solid structure without harm. Plunged into fluidic space, he countered with Air. Once, they arrived in a completely dark void, and all the light spell accomplished was to reveal the full extent of the nightmarish situation, for below them sprawled a city of unnervingly large carnivorous slugs, and quickly approaching above was the ceiling of the cave they were flying through, against which the fiend intended to brush him off to his doom below. Sornath scrambled down from atop the being and found a new handhold along its leeward side.

If the hero had failed to make all of these adjustments and at any point became helpless, the creature surely would have remained in that dimension until the mage died. But each time he adjusted successfully and in the moments after he resumed hacking and slashing at the weak points in the thing's carapace, forcing it to again seek refuge in another dimension. As this flight into insanity dragged on Sornath exhausted his magical reserves and had to call upon a mage's most precious resource, Energy Banks, to replenish his strength and keep up the fight. At last, after using every spare moment to hack away at the creature, he exposed a brain stem contact point and through direct contact with it was able to enhance his Control Mind spell enough to affect the creature. He commanded it to portal him home. Then, he commanded it to implode. As proof of his success, some of the gore flew out through the still-open portal.

* * *

Colossals

If stories of titans and giants have been handed down as part of the mythology of a thousand cultures, surely the Colossals are the source of that nearly universal lore. Once seen, the Colossals forever fill up the minds of any who encounter them and survive. The memory stays imprinted on the subconscious so that the Colossals are never forgotten by that race. Like the Nephilim of myth, these giants stand as proof that the angels have been contaminated by chaos. Though whereas the nephilim myth speaks of a sexual coupling between angels and mortal women, in reality this manner of reproduction did not yet exist and only arose in a later eon with the appearance of living ecosystems. The Colossals predate this and were generated by another process more akin to a violent chemical reaction between elements. Giants arose from a cross-pollination of essences, the divine and abysmal.

Gargantuan and relatively few in number compared to the other species in the hegemony, each colossal is unique and inordinately strong. The Colossals' destructive potential matches their size; to fight them is to engage in battle with mountains. Of all the patrons, these most closely resemble the fallen gods in physical appearance. They are the only ones who might be mistaken for direct offspring of the gods, though in truth they are products of the same fusion process as all the other patrons and are as far removed from being "children of the gods" as the Toxicities or Nightmares. What then causes such variation among the patron species? Each type of patron is made from a set mixture of abyssal substance and matter. Ah, but how much of one, and how much of the other? There is where the answer is found. Every species exists at a different point along the fusion spectrum that governed our birth. The Colossals benefit from having the richest mixture of godstuff in their makeup, combined with a less potent dose of the evil ectoplasm of fate. In contrast, the vile Toxicities fall on the other end of the spectrum and contain the highest ratio of the substance of fate blended with only a small measure of godlike material.

As a result, everything a colossus touches molds itself to fit the giant's whims, as if the matter of this universe were rushing to answer the call of its true masters, the deities, even though giants contain only a dim echo of the gods' rightful authority lurking still in their ichor. Enough divinity remains in them, though, to align matter as they wish, and for this the Colossals are renowned as the owners of perhaps our greatest forward progress towards godhood. Conversely, the Toxicities have earned their own separate kind of renown; everything they touch withers and dies because of their ponderous concentration of foreign abysmal matter that acts as acid when it comes in contact with the native atoms of this cosmos.

The minds of giants are listless and dull, but not in every sense. The evil in them is less concentrated than in the others, so their malice is not as sharp. Less directed. They must be conscripted into war by others or else they languish. In this vegetative state, they are called The Sleepers due to how they use their ability to sink into the earth effortlessly and disappear from view as part of the underlying terrain. Once off stage, however, their wandering consciousness is not idle: it produces great wonders. They control the lands above them as a godlike domain in which all that happens is arranged by them the way a dreamer arranges landscapes in the dream to suit his fancy. Sleepers perform endless matter manipulation exercises within their fiefdoms. They become engrossed in the study of creation. They learn to mimic this divine skill as if they were godling artisans practicing for a recital. Which, of course, they are.

Those who enter into such dreamt environments might see the land transforming before their eyes, with rifts opening in the earth or hills rising from flat land to encircle them, towns appearing where there were none. Visitors to these domains have essentially entered into the dreamspace of another entity, and are a foreign presence within the dream. Should their presence anger the dreamer they could find all the world rising up against them. Or if they delight the dreamer somehow they might discover that all things respond to their requests. The subconscious of the invader can interact with the subconscious of the dreamer in unexpected ways as well. With a Sleeper, direct communication is not always possible. Brushing against its subconscious mind takes the place of verbal interaction. Most who visit dream domains never realize it, though. They pass unaware into a Sleeper's sphere of influence and the creature experiments to see what their reactions are to its work. Will its crafted environments fool their senses or be found unbelievable in some way? Or the Sleeper tests their responses to certain stimuli to learn about their nature. Interlopers become either the Sleeper's playthings or the rats in its laboratory. Some have died trapped within the domain boundaries, lost upon winding switchback roads that never reached a destination—by design.

The Builders (Innovators) act as architects who guide Colossals in constructing our most awe inspiring earthworks and architectural marvels. Elementals are present throughout the process as well; they add the fine artistry and finishing touches which tie it all together into a functional metropolis. (The Elementals' original research made all of this matter manipulation possible.) When the giants are awake, a Builder will convey to them the schematic for what is to be built. Then in the dream state the giants bulldoze earth and compose it to match the schematic. The giant is then free to move on and craft new territory—_their dreams do not fade when they wake_. The landscape is permanently changed. Castles built by them in a day are just as real as any built over the course of many years by human labor. Their handiwork cannot be dispelled.

When the work needs to be very exacting , a Builder will synch his subconscious with that of the Sleeper to better oversee the project. Interestingly, there is a special meeting of the minds between these two species, whose abilities are the inverse of each other: a Giant can control surrounding matter but not its own form (which is permanent and remains stable at all times), while the Shifter controls the shape of its own body mass but not its surroundings. It appears at first sight that both of these species are incomplete, like two halves of a whole, with their abilities destined never to intersect. But there _is_ a point of intersection! It is found in the subconscious link they share when working together. The discovery of this union was greeted by both species with a religious ecstasy since it allows each to enjoy a sense of wholeness, as if both were engineered by destiny to become part of this larger entity. Which, of course, they were. Through the shared mindspace of the link, giants can at last experience what it is like to shapeshift, and Shifters whose power has always been bottled up within themselves can experience the elation of turning that power outward upon the world at large and bringing order to the environment with the same precision control they exhibit over their own form!

The religion of the Builders revolves around this telepathic union which allows them, the makers of so many demonic machines, to themselves become cogs in a living machine. They look upon it as a chance to become joined to a higher purpose. And they consider it a rite, as do the giants, so the two often cohabitate. The largest Colossals tower mountainously above the plains, and just as mountains have caves they too possess hollow recesses. Entire communities of Innovators sometimes take up residence inside these living caves. Their sharper minds take turns guiding the Colossal to remake the world as it migrates across the land. Some titans have functioned as troop carriers for a limited duration, but others house _permanent_ settlements and have become thriving mobile cities. In the case of smaller Colossals, the same community of builders might choose to perch _upon_ the giant's body in shapechanged forms that augment the creature. You might notice their gift to the Colossal has taken the form of a gigantic suit of armor perfectly fitted to the monster's carapace. A puny assassin trying to scale this giant may find he has even more of a fight on his hands than he bargained for when its armor comes to life and reaches out like a fly trap to entomb the assailant. Or, if the Shifters are offensive minded, you might observe them gathering on one of the giant's hands and transforming it into whatever weapon is most convenient at the moment.

Colossals are considered active participants in Patron society. In their own way they blend in, as difficult as that may be to envision. Many of our cities have Sleepers sown into the foundations, which is ideal for defense. They can dissolve and reform important bridges as needed, quickly patch walls damaged by trebuchets, etc. But this also allows the resident Colossal to aesthetically redesign the architecture from time to time almost overnight, and on special occasions the needs of our citizens are seen to by having the environment conform to whatever they require. Our cities are planned to provide access to as many patron species as possible, and many of the avenues are actually wide rifts through which larger colossals can maneuver. The smallest of these titans are even seen walking the wider roadways next to the rest of the hegemony's legions. In large war parties, their hulking forms are interspersed among the smaller species to overshadow and embolden the rest. Or they might travel under ground, invisibly marching beneath our armies with no hint of an earthquake to betray their presence. They mold the earth so that it flows around them frictionless and their passage leaves no wake of destruction, until the terrible moment when they burst forth from the ground to the complete surprise of an enemy host soon to die!

KILL METHOD: _PROVING GROUND_ BATTLES

The giant's domain rises up against you and must be overcome before you can reach the malignant one who watches and waits at the center of the matter maelstrom. If you are worthy of slaying the Nephilim, _prove it_ by successfully navigating this obstacle course. Sudden rockfalls and earthquakes manifest if the monster wishes to remain hidden and kill you under the guise of a natural disaster. Or if the Nephilim is aware that a capable assassin approaches, it will cause the land to shift wildly to prevent your progress towards it, abandoning secrecy to smite you more openly with the instant appearance of murderous cliffs and pitfalls that should not be. To block your path, earthen dams suddenly jut up as high as foothills. Or you are forced to leap from one prominence to another as they collapse in succession, with the final leap landing you at last on the giant's carapace. And beware of suddenly widening gulfs and sinking sands that seek to trap you inside compaction zones where the earth itself grinds you to pulp. Rarely, if minerals are available for the monster to draw upon, a wall of pure ore might be erected around the colossal, or a castle rampart made of metals, and if you have not the means to breach it then your crusade has come to an end.

Sometimes, if the Sleeper is yet undisturbed and unaware of any threat, you might be able to bypass the earthen battle and safely traverse the Colossal's domain to reach the grounds directly atop the Colossal's submerged form. The top of its skull will lie just beneath the surface. He of dubious wisdom can then stand astride this dangerous epicenter and jolt the giant awake, forcing it to issue forth from the earth to face him in perilous combat. The opposite is true as well: if a giant who walks above ground marks your approach, it may choose to dive into the earth to prevent any risk to itself while its domain does away with you and the threat you pose. You must then fight your way through spitefully terraforming terrain to reach the epicenter and force the sunken giant to the surface. This is done by breaking ground in order to strike at the creature's exposed pate, or by shaking and rending the earth through sorcery. An elemental earth spell cast upon the epicenter will suffice. If the epicenter is elusive, it may be that the giant has become a moving target underground. Flush it out of hiding by using ground-pounding _conduction drums_ to vibrate the dirt and stone underfoot so that all burrowing creatures are pained and must break off their stay beneath the earth and draw to the surface.

The magic of the drums interferes with any magics used by burrowing creatures. Historically, in lands beset by burrowing foes, such drums were as common as hunting horns and they were deployed in various ways, sometimes with many of them forming a defensive perimeter to ward off burrowers with impassable walls of vibration. This created safe zones where those within could live their lives without the constant worry that earthen terrors might burst forth at any moment to devour them. The drums have also been used strategically to herd and corral such unseen enemies whilst still underground, sometimes even forcing them to emerge out of the side of a cliff face, which sent them plummeting to their deaths in an homage to the technique mammoth hunters used so long ago. Look to the ruins of the Ikkata to find these wondrous weapons along with many and more artifacts of arcane interest.

Like with shapeshifting Innovators, each Colossal will have a unique form complete with its own weaknesses. The power of _discernment_ can make these weaknesses known to you, or else experimentation will yield the answer of how to hurt each giant once you are directly engaged in battle with it and its form is in full view. A giant cannot shapeshift to eliminate its weakness like the Builders can in a shapechanger battle, so once you discover a giant's flaw you should be able to exploit it at your leisure, should you live long enough to do so. At this point, need we remind you that their mighty attacks will instantly destroy any recipient? When the massive limbs of the giant attack, be elsewhere. Once you have exploited the giant's flaw and the monster is ailing, you will on occasion encounter some valiant _shifters_ who leave their perches on the monster's carapace and move to cover up the colossal's wound with their own malleable forms, spending their lives to shield the colossal from your next blow. You must grant them their wish, for only through the shredding of their body armor can you claim your victory.

There are also strange tales involving Colossals being _put to sleep_ by great mentalists who then exerted control over the giant through the subconscious link it would customarily have shared only with the Builder patrons. The psychic assailant was then able to command the giant to create a realm not of its choosing but one instead suited to the whims of its new master. Such unbridled power was not meant for mortals to control, and these whispered accounts all end with the mentalist coming to ruin. One's greed led him to raise a city of gold around him, turning all he espied to ore, while at the same time assuring his demise as armies converged on his city from all the surrounding lands. Through the artifice of his Colossal he was able to slay the great majority of the marauders, but in the end one of their daggers reached him.


	18. The Outcasts: Discord, Torture, Disease

Outcasts

* * *

The Discordant Ones

Psi demons. Broadcasters of painful stray thoughts. These beings are relics of evil's early experimental phase when darkness first became self-aware and crossed over into consciousness. Instead of awareness being a tool for order as the gods intended, in the hands of the Discordant consciousness became weaponized. It became a source of chaos. A psychic storm swirls around these sowers of Discord, affecting the minds of any who draw near. They are the source of such magic effects as _Inspire Hate, Confusion, Fear, Control Minds, and Fray_. As the pied pipers of the ancient world, these Discordant ones would wade into an opposing army fearlessly and its ranks would break as the legions' minds were taken with insanity. A pocket of chaos would form around them wherein enemy troops no longer followed or even remembered the orders of their commanders. These troops had been co-opted and now rallied around the psi demon, serving as its body guards and agents of chaos as the Discordant marched on towards its objective unimpeded.

Psi demons were branded as outcasts by the other patrons of evil due to how their presence disrupted even demigod-approved 'proper evils' from being carried out. They were an enigma to be called upon only in times of need and relegated to the shadowy outskirts of patron society in the meantime. Those who failed to live according to this dictate were hunted down and weeded out. But aside from this there is another reason why psi demons are so rare today. Most of their species was expended in the great psychic bonfire that we call the Παρουσιάζοντας φρίκη στη φυσική τάξη, or _the introduction of terror into the natural order_.

When Life emerged on the many worlds, the Discordant enjoyed turning living things against one another. Here and there, they bade brothers to murder their kin or urged clans to war needlessly, so the potential of the living was snuffed out before ever it came to fruition. But they did so only sporadically, acting individually as lone terrors. The demigods realized the threat that Nature posed: sentient beings would one day arise healthy and strong to stand against evil's ambitions. So the demigods gathered together the Discordant Ones at the Destiny Forge and burned them there on a great sacrificial pyre. The first vampires then aided the demigods in one of the most powerful spells ever worked. Together they collected the amassed psi powers of all of the slain discord demons and sent all of that madness coursing into the veins of Nature itself. _In this way, the natural order was twisted, perverted and sickened—__**permanently**__, and not just on one world but everywhere on every world! _Discord was sown directly into all life. Creatures began to evolve sharp teeth and claws. To the gods' horror, living things were now forced to kill and eat each other in order to survive. Nature's wires had become crossed and chaos invaded all aspects of life. The ecosystem was set against itself, like a formerly healthy creature whose stomach now devoured its own flesh, eating itself from within! In the divine order, all living things would have augmented each other, each adding to the glory of the whole. Now that dream was dashed as the living turned ravenous, becoming a blight upon themselves. Discord is the reason why souls are heard wailing in dismay in the spirit world, for they have been viciously torn from the material plane they were born into so hopeful, betrayed by a natural order gone wrong from what the divine had promised them. It was and is evil's greatest victory over Life.

KILL METHOD: PSI BATTLE.

Stand outside the sphere of influence of these mind masterers so thou fallest not under their control. Assault them with projectiles from afar. Or with telekinesis that brings doom down on their heads from above whilst thou remain beyond the radius of their psychic touch. Aspire to this, though they will attempt to block your line of fire by interposing their thralls between them and you. Once they have remade someone into a thrall, that poor fool remains loyal even when sent on missions that range far beyond the demon's radius of power; the demon will send its minions to attack you no matter how far back from it you stand. And though it cannot take over your mind if you remain outside its sphere, it can and will broadcast pain over greater distances. An attacker caught by this psi blast will lose his concentration. Telekinesis, spellcasting, and any ongoing actions will be interrupted by the alien thoughts screaming through the minds of those afflicted.

Normally, thoughts are enclosed within the mind of the thinker. There is no such barrier to confine the consciousness of the discordant ones, whose minds are porous and whose thoughts intrude on all who are near. But, just as the demon's presence is painful to others, so too does it feel pained by the proximity of your mind. This is why none can hide from the Discordant, who always sense the thoughts of others. This is also why it converts others to thralls: by taking away the independent thought of those it encounters, the demon no longer has to contend with the disharmony of foreign minds within its hearing. This is however something one can turn to his advantage when confronting these cerebral terrors. One with a strong mind can psi-grapple the demon and seek to turn the tables against the aggressor. Gain dominance in psychic battle and you will succeed at moving the battleground from your mind to its own. Invading the patron's mind lethally overloads it with the pain it feels when exposed to the vigor of Life. Become the strong brand of sentience the divine originally intended to arise from Nature. Become the very thing the discordant ones have dedicated themselves to stamping out! Once your psyche is shielded and your will is disciplined, you can hope to win a mental standoff against Discordants by shifting the fulcrum to your advantage and besting them at their own art. It was the Torturers who first learned and recorded the ways of psychic mastery. Look to them as your teachers for how to reinforce the mind against Discord. Only then can you march straight through their sphere of influence unharmed.

* * *

The Hunters & Torturers

Whereas psi demons are cast out from patron society, the Torturers are also outcasts but of a different sort, for they are found at the very heart of the hegemony, employed by every patron species, either openly or in secret, yet still they are treated as the unclean. And though given a wide berth and shown much respect they are simultaneously shunned by the other species who refuse to have dealings with these vile abusers outside of the businesslike interactions for which they were hired. The nastiness of the Torturers' work _over the ages_ has made them deeply despised by the other patrons of evil. But they are a constant necessity in the hegemony, for it is their efforts that maintain the flow of information, squeezing the secrets out of evil's secret societies and giving a competitive edge to whichever species currently holds the advantage in what you might call _industrial_ _espionage_. Torture is the great equalizer. Especially in a climate where schemes more diabolical than anything mortals can imagine are omnipresent, with so many factions vying for dominance that some secrets invariably slip through the cracks amidst so much turmoil, and some dark plans that have spanned eons undetected come dangerously close to fruition, so that on more than one occasion an entire species' doom has been narrowly averted only by chance when an enemy's well-timed torturing produced the only warning of how great their peril truly was.

And you would be wrong to think the number of factions is limited to just the hegemony's member species each looking out for their own interests. This accounts for only the most basic level of back stabbing and social climbing. Most of the factions are more complex by far, including members drawn from multiple evil species joined together in a common pursuit that may be opposed by other factions made up of their own peoples as well as additional species whose vested interests lie along another path. Different demigods may be spearheading each of these long term projects which will ultimately be at odds at some point several thousand years in the future, yet both demis proceed with their plans, and _may the best evil win out_ as thousands of Patrons pledge themselves to one cause or the other, setting in motion an inevitable clash between these two agendas which can only end in blood. When these two factions collide it is like continents brushing against each other tectonically, and the Torturers stand at the leading edge of each passing land mass with their knives outstretched to cut a swath through the dissenting point of view. Strangely, over geologic time it is the torturers who bring the two factions into greater harmony by cutting away the extremists of each side and slowly enforcing a consensus by leaving in their wake only the safe zone of commonality. The constant scraping of their tectonic knives ultimately eases the joining of continents together into a coalition of evil dreams, preventing any major political earthquake in hell so that our gods never come to war with each other wastefully (with only a few noteworthy exceptions over the eons). So it is that when factions are evenly matched, the Torturers represent Compromise Through Pain. And when one faction gets the advantage through torture, it tries to push its doctrine through to victory while the opposing side feels a sense of urgency…. to hire more and better torturers in the hopes of catching up in the race for dominance.

The abusers are also known as Hunters because an employer will not always be able to supply the victim directly to the torturer's den. In that event, the torturer must needs go to the victim. They are akin to the traveling witch hunters of old who haunted the bloody history of your own world for centuries. Hunters have gathered to themselves much lore and possess an unrivaled expertise when it comes to apprehending the various species who fall within their purview and rendering these specimens helpless through arcane means. They are not sorcerers themselves, but by using their art of applying pain they have forced each species to reveal the recipe for how to disarm its defensive magics and bypass its unnatural abilities so that creatures who would normally be much tougher to bring down are laid low by the Hunters with relative ease. This only adds to the aura of fear that surrounds the Torturers.

KILL METHOD: HUNT THE HUNTER

Their bodies are not formidable. As a species they have had precious little cause to exert themselves. Instead they rely on their proven shortcuts to incapacitate the enemy by causing pain. Should you somehow manage to overcome their go-to moves and force the Hunters into a fair fight, they would suddenly be among the easiest to kill of all the patron species. Lure them into your trap. The grotesque hobbling form of the torturers is the perfect outward reflection of the ugliness of their actions. An angular oozing mass of flesh, like a slow-scrabbling spider crab, they have roughly the mass of a small horse but with a lower center of gravity, and are usually found cloaked and hooded in the robes of their order, but truthfully the cloaks they wear are woven of secrecy and shame.

Most of the Hunters have had their nerve bundles and pain receptors removed or otherwise deadened due to the species' overwhelming fear of being tortured in return by one of their previous victim's associates. They feel the enmity towards them from the other patrons brimming and they fear that it will one day reach the boiling point. Over the ages they have come to have a great psychological fear that vengeance must eventually be visited upon them by the others for all their horrible acts. You can play upon these fears when you turn the Hunter into the hunted. Often, all you have to do is convince the Torturer that it is about to be tortured and it will simply destroy itself rather than face the ignominy it so dreads. Also, you can turn its deadened nerves to your advantage in a fight. Pain, as you will recall, is often the best early warning system a being can have, and the Torturers have denied themselves this. Their reaction speed will be vastly slowed when you subject them to environmental hazards—if something is distracting them they won't notice themselves burning or freezing or suffering a mauling until it is too late and massive damage has befallen them. The quickest way to defeat their pain-bringing talents is to belong to a species they've never encountered before or else shapechange into such a form. Failing that, hire or enthrall such a one for use as the attacker. That way the Hunters will have no proven devices or torture techniques to rely on when fighting you and will have to make an educated guess at what might hurt you, which gives you at least a fighting chance. It pays to have ways of not being there when they activate their specially targeted torture implements, too. Blind them or obscure yourself. Then grab their instruments of pain for use against the Hunters! Check their dens carefully afterwards for the valuable secrets that often abound therein, including rare spells and clues about how to reach new areas previously forbidden to travelers, as well as secret knowledge about the true natures of various species, including weaknesses and hidden potentials.

* * *

Disease Bringers

It was the Torturers who were tasked with capturing vampires for study after the Uprising. They experimented on them until the treacherous altered souls of the vampires were laid bare, along with the secrets of how they intended to betray us all to the light. Only then did our Disease Bringers understand the mechanisms of the soul well enough to protect the rest of us from the vampires' holy contagion. _Armed_ w_ith this knowledge, the Bringers then went on to craft the _blood curse_ we inflicted on the ancients_.

Just as they brought the Plague upon mankind. Your funerals bear witness to the effectiveness of these monsters, and the varied weapons they use to strike down the living. The works of Bringers have brought death to uncounted millions well before their appointed time. They _bring_ souls to the underworld by using disease to rip away the bodies that encase these souls, preventing the divine substance from tarrying in the material realm. Forestalling the evolution of the soul. The Bringers' efforts thus keep the divine from gaining the foothold it requires in this world. This makes impossible heaven's bid to improve its lot. While at the same time mortals are weakened, forever unable to oppose evil in a cohesive way, for somewhere amid all your coughing and dying and mourning, your steadfastness is lost. This is the power of upheaval itself given form. You term it _disease_. It is the slight of hand by which we distract those _currently_ living so they lose sight of what is truly important, while with the other hand we cut down the destinies of your children's children before they are ever born.

KILL METHOD: THE SWORD OF ALCHEMY.

The science of the healer. Always is it one step behind. Much needed cures only arrive after a blight has taken many. Remedies for a particular disease only remedy _that_ disease, never striking at the root cause, the Bringer! He remains free to create ever more death. If one wishes to expunge the very source of Disease, the healer's art must elevate into something greater so that it no longer merely _reacts_ to a known ailment but strikes first—strikes at the _unknown_, unseen hand of the Bringer. You must learn to kill disease quicker and more aggressively than disease itself kills. Only then will you be swift enough to discover and exploit the connection that ties each disease back to the patron who unleashed it.

By and large, the physical bodies of Bringers remain safely ensconced in hell while their craft allows them to invisibly waft disease from their laboratories into your world through the ether. To reverse this process and target the distant Bringer with a specially concocted assassination virus launched from your location, an alchemist's arcane science is required. The secret is this: the makeup of every disease contains all the vital targeting data you will need, writ right there within its genetic coding for any and all to see if only they be clever enough. The personality, strengths and weaknesses of a Bringer determine the nature of the diseases it produces—one might even say the nature of the crafter is _keyed_ to the nature of the malady. The alchemist may study a Bringer's work to unlock not just the secret of curing _that_ disease, but in addition he can decode the overarching antidote to _all_ things containing those genetic markers. This includes the Bringer. The alchemist can now use planar tracking comb through the ethereal realm and pinpoint the disease's exact place of origin…. The Bringer's dens will usually be in a remote region of the Banishment dimension, since their diseases are potent enough to sometimes claim even the "lives" of their soulless peers, the Patrons. For this, Bringers have been numbered among the Outcasts…. Now that it has a destination, your viral counterattack may be fed through the ether like contaminated air through a vent. Hopefully, it will wipe out the creature as if _it_ were suddenly struck with a virulent wasting disease. Additionally, you will be able to inoculate yourself and your loved ones _in advance_ against any new form of sickness the monster might hurl at you in the future, should it survive your salvo. And you'll also be protected against its spore clouds should you choose to walk through the planar portal into hell to combat the Bringer in person and make sure of its demise!

The average world has not achieved the level of scientific advancement needed to pull off this feat, however. So for most of you, the Bringers will remain happily beyond your reach, so sorry to say. Though, while a world's _apparent_ level of scientific discovery may be insufficient for the task, there may yet be secret societies within your civilization who busy themselves with hoarding the exact kind of knowledge you seek. Seek them out, and put them to the question.


	19. Defilers & The Infernal Legions

The Defilers (Toxicities)

The Harbingers of Desolation. These over-sized sentient slugs ooze with a toxic evil that pollutes and ruins any area. A corrosive substance marks where defilers have been. It makes a region unfit for habitation by creatures of the light. And should many of them nest in a place, all plant and animal matter dies and the local ecosystem may well never recover. Ever. Masses of them swarm over each other in a pit that extends deep into the earth, for the very dirt and rock have melted and eroded away from the caustic writhing of these unclean wyrms. Their excretions are the most potent manifestation of the abyss that exists in the material realm. The Banishment's pits and bogs are feared in large part due to their nests.

Some bastions of holiness are yet found in the world, places that other patrons dare not set foot in. The intense purity of these hallowed haunts keeps most demons at bay, burning them upon touch. The Toxicities are called upon to defile and desecrate these lands and strip away their hallowed quality. Holy cities, relics, and warriors exposed to the defilers lose their invulnerability. They weaken, sicken, and fall. Once defiled, the holy is no longer able to manifest in or through them.

Some toxicities are content to wallow in the mire of their making as do the crocodiles, so that only he who approaches them need die. Though there are others among them who are deep in Evil's counsel, who know Its mind and who rally their race to act when hell's princes require it. These ones receive visions from Nightmares; they fill the role of prophets and priests of doom within the hive society of defilers. Toxicities may be found in the company of Serpentines with whom they share a similarity of form, or in times of war they are seen interacting with the Nightmares who possess near as much darkness as they. And, horribly, they will sometimes mass around a Trueform Terror, as if oblivious to how the Terrors are the greatest growing threat in the known cosmos. Rather, they treat It like their hive's honorary queen, for, strangely, the diet of each species affords the other with increased protection as together they leech the hope out of your worlds. (See: Trueform Terrors).

So nasty are the defilers that the majority of their time is spent apart from other Patrons of Evil in a self-imposed exile. They are not Outcasts as the Disease Bringers are, and none would stand against them if they were to impose their presence on even our busiest districts, but by mutual agreement this rarely happens. We don't like the inconvenience of dealing with their harmful sludge trails and they are prejudiced against the less potent patrons who chose a matter-heavy existence over the substance of the abyss. They question the loyalty of the rest of us. And their worries were justified, as it turns out: the Vampires were able to flip several Patron species to the light before the insanity ran its course. But never a Defiler. So the rest of us endure their contempt and the occasional _infusions _they subject us to in order that we might stay forever true.

KILL TECHNIQUE: DIVINE SACRIFICE

Facing a nest of these nasties requires perfect fighting skills—once the defilers land a single blow, you are done for as a creature of the light. Unless you wish to die, seek out a Holy Conflict Guardian and conjoin it to your spirit; this divine entity will then lend to you a measure of its perfection so you might evade evil's touch. By expending their divine essence, the holy will provide you with invulnerability, until their strength wanes and they can walk with you no longer. (This was the original meaning of the term "Conflict Guardian," back before the Ninefold Gift of the gods fell into misuse—now Guardians are synonymous with the abuse of power, but it was not always so. Instead of using the power of Conflict as a weapon, or as a brutal advantage with which to _win_ wars, the original Guardians _guarded_ the world from conflict! They walked unscathed through battlefields until they came upon the slave drivers who were so intent upon sending others to their deaths. Then the Guardian gave death to these powermad generals and kings, so that the armies might disperse and return to their families.)

Once junctioned to your soul, the light of the divine entity you have called upon will suffuse your undeserving flesh and shine out from your eyes, indwelling. This guardianship is Invited, making it the opposite of those demon possessions done through coercion, and its effect is not to use up your frail body but to toughen you to face the terrible task ahead. The hero's mission must be worthy of divine assistance or no lightform will bind itself to his cause—and for good reason: it is the divine sojourner who must sacrifice its own magnitude so that the hero might fight perfectly, invincible for a time. Simply having the holy present in the fight is not enough to prevent you and it from becoming besmirched; in order to remain undefiled it must sacrifice its potential on your behalf. So be about your business quickly, or else your tarrying will only squander heaven's remaining strength and aid demonkind as we watch and wait and laugh. _When it comes time to slay the slitherers, merely call upon the candle of divinity within to burn brighter so that a starburst of holy light shines forth to encompass the darkness of the Defilers' nest and expunge its evil._ As you burn the defilers, take a moment to reflect on how you're also burning your angel.

For those whose conscience cannot abide being involved in an angel's demise, there is perhaps another way…. though only for one as foolish as he is brave. There are tales of heroes who have relied on their own combat skills alone, who survived the encounter only because _they made no mistakes_! These heroes traipsed right into nests and raided them, plundering relics or retrieving something (or someone) once precious to them, now forever besmirched. Such brave souls could not hope to slay the defilers unaided, however, until they availed themselves of science: sneak a powerful magnetic field into the slitherers' den, then activate it to wreak havoc on the Defilers' flesh. So much of them is composed of abysmal matter that their forms are stitched together with only a small amount of matter from this universe. And though their skins still seem leathery, a higher than usual amount of their makeup is metallic, which strengthens their form while letting them get by with the least possible physical substance. This can be their downfall! When subjected to intense magnetic shifts, their "thin skins" tear loose from their moorings. Their bodies collapse. But beware, as this only releases from within them the very same dark matter of the abyss that made these creatures so dangerous to begin with. While before they might have only fired a few well aimed venomous projectiles at you, this substance is even more dangerous when set free to puddle and slosh about. Don't allow yourself to be cut off from all escape by a rising tide of doom! And if you wish to protect life, then don't allow the defilers' blood to seep into the water table! Shepherd it into pools with your magnets then use planar portals or dimensionally _implode_ it away with spirit forged items such as _pentilich of tarot_.

Regarding the use of light against Defilers: though they hide in the darkness and light does indeed pain them, light alone does nothing to slay the Toxicities and only slightly slows their movement. Remember, these are hell's shock forces, the ones who brave the brightest of holy places, befoul them, and survive. They can withstand brilliance. It is sacrifice that slays them. Even the magnet-induced kill method involves sacrifice—to spill their blood into the soil means you have chosen to sacrifice the health of your world.

* * *

Legion Forms

Hives. They are the most common of all Patron Species of Evil. It is mostly their bodies which litter the battlefields of hell, as befits them, for they are expendable cannon fodder with little or no individuality in their nature. Legions rush in, wave after wave of whichever cloned form they currently wear, as decided by our ruling Singularities. A legion's chosen body type will be of the shape best suited to achieving its current goal. Legions are devoted to a cause, whether it be to overcome a particular species and pacify its homeworld, or to defeat the legions of another of hell's princes, or even simply to gather round a closed dimensional gateway and wait as still as statues for untold millennia in case the binding between dimensions should ever fail and the gate suddenly open up onto a newly accessible portion of the material realm.

All legions ultimately belong to the same species, though you may encounter several radically distinct variants (or subspecies) standing side by side, which means you are opposed by that many Queens, each of which has morphed her soldiers into a specialized body design for improved combat effectiveness against a specific foe. Or else they were morphed in order to thrive in a particular environment. Or they were designed to excel at some physical labor such as mining or tearing down forests. Each Queen's litter is instantly identifiable by its current physical traits and markings, and a trained observer steeped in Legion lore could tell you which Queen each captured specimen belongs to. Just as your knights teach their squires to identify each great lord of men by the heraldry of his house, so too do demons find it a vital skill to learn the mutation history of the many Infernal Legions. We know that in the haze of war our lives may one day depend on such knowledge. So the markings and current incarnations of hell's Legions are tracked carefully. Meanwhile, employers of legions often try just as hard to conceal which Queen has given rise to a mysterious new legion form, so as to disguise that legion's true loyalties. (Paving the way for a spectacular betrayal or sudden shift in power.)

Both the Legion Forms and Trueform Terrors operate by marshalling vast quantities of power; they exist in stark contrast, however, because of how they choose to distribute those energy reserves. The Terrors grow menacing by pooling untold energy into a single entity, whereas the legions divvy up that same might amongst their multitudes. We demons have placed our future in the hands of the Terrors, though for the nonce they are still whelps, untried against the heavens. In theory, they might even make a fatal mistake, being only one mind and capable of faltering. This would represent a tremendous loss of resources. So for the time being hell holds back its most favored sons and sends forth Legions as its vanguard, Legions who lose only as much of their numbers as success requires, and who rarely if ever put the whole at risk. Legions who can always scavenge more energy to rebuild the numbers they have lost.

How it works: when a batch of soldiers has outlived their usefulness, all the survivors are recalled by the Queen. In her presence, they are ritually consumed and their energies reabsorbed. In this state they exist as energy allotments, or unfertilized eggs—potentialities, if you will. If the Legion's next mutation is officially sanctioned by the Powers, a demigod will at this time make available to the Queen enough power to bring her legion up to full strength, replacing any offspring that were lost during the last war cycle. The older the Queen, the higher the total number of energy slots at her disposal, and therefore the more clones she can produce. If times are tough, or the Legion belongs to a faction that is out of favor, things don't always go as smoothly—a legion's last task might be to desperately scavenge new power sources for their Queen to use in the upcoming transmutation. The Underworld has sometimes suffered the theft of its spirit energies so that a hive could prosper.

It is not unheard of for Legions to go bankrupt of energy reserves. Sometimes, this is the only way to truly force an end to the cycle of violence, or else a well-funded legion will continue to regenerate indefinitely. _Assassinate the Queen_ is also an ever-present strategy used against this species. Of course such attempts almost never succeed because from the beginning of time the Queens have been eminently on guard against it and as new threats emerge they raise spawn specially adapted to parry the threat. But you are obviously the chosen one who will get the job done. Ha! You are welcome to try, at any rate. Note also that several Patron species, including the Dark Seers, have concocted sorceries of their own to prevent endless warfare with the Legions by bestowing the _true death_ on any legionnaires they slay. In other words, any kills they make using these magics prevent the Queen from using that soldier's energy slot to respawn any future generations of offspring. In essence, these sorceries enable one to whittle down the size of a legion over time, until the Queen can be slain or forced to retreat.

Once her spawn are cannibalized, the powered up Queen enters a state of quantum flux and is ready for input. Sometimes the legion's new form comes down from on high, sent to her from the mind of evil itself, designed by one of the Powers. Other times, a Shapechanger (Builder Patron) will collaborate with the Queen, running through a series of experimental body shapes and even performing trials to determine which is the most efficient. Then, the finalized version is used as a template for the new army—the Shifter has become the father of the legion's next incarnation, and his form's presence within the energy cloud serves to fertilize the eggs. Sometimes the shapeshifter even emerges from the experience alive. Elsewise the poor creature gets consumed in the creation process, a necessary evil to hear the Queen describe it, as she smiles the smile of the black widow. And, if pressed, the Queens can redesign herself so the spawn then follows her through the changes, though the results are likely to be crude depending on how adept she is at her craft. Imagine if, while giving birth, you also had to focus on the complex task of maintaining the child's heartbeat and forming its internal organs to specifications.

Adding to the wonder and mystery of the legions, they also have the blood magic of Vampires floating dormant in their veins. This magic dates back to when the vampires were loyal members of the hegemony and used their arts to boost the strength of legions by gifting them with enhancements sewn right into their black blood. Some of these spells were carnage incentives to be activated by bloodshed, while some powers were defensive in nature and meant to be summoned by runes writ in the legionnaires' _own_ blood. Alas, the legions no longer remember many of the triggers for these spells now fallen into disuse, and the generations pass on the blood magic only subconsciously, similar to how humans have no control over which of their genes will surface in their children, or when a hidden hereditary disease might trigger. Rumors persist that some Queens remember more of the blood lore than others, and can consciously direct it to surface in their broods; whether true or false, this has resulted in some Mothers being more in demand as demigods jockey for prestige legions.

KILL METHOD: HYPERSPEED SLAUGHTER

If the legions swarm the hillsides and are everywhere around you, the key to killing them is for you to also be everywhere at once. Accomplish this by moving with supernatural swiftness to counter their numbers advantage and turn their omnipresence into a liability. They will present you with a target rich environment where you essentially cannot miss, while you will give them nothing to strike back against if they cannot follow your movements fast enough! Cut a swath through them to show the cloned multitude that they cannot match the fervor of one born unique. Legion mates will all share the same weakness, so it will be possible to string together a long series of attacks against an entire field full of identical opponents. They will endeavor to slow you down to stop the slaughter. By landing a blow they can knock you out of your speed dash. Do not allow this to happen, as it can all go downhill for you from there if the legion closes in before you can escape to build back speed and once more go on the offensive. Keeping your string of lethal hits going will require lightning reflexes and continually choosing the best path every time multiple paths branch off in front of you. Always choose the direction that provides you with continued maneuverability and not one of the directions that's being pinched closed by encroaching enemies.

A simple hack and slash technique will suffice as Legion Forms are among the weakest of the patron species. Sometimes it's a two step process like running around and slashing off a sharp-edged limb from each legionnaire before coming back around for another pass and picking up each severed limb to use for impaling the next enemy you meet. Or, depending on the legion, it might be a one-step kill technique that will send you leaping from atop the shoulders of each enemy to the next whilst striking off its head with your blade every time you push off toward the next victim. You might also employ a modified mist dodge complete with a slash as part of it to disembowel a legion of tall-walkers on leg stalks.

Whatever the method, once you discover it you'll find yourself engaged in the kind of sustained fever-pitch carnage a vampire would relish most. Why? Because the _hyperspeed dash_ skill we're recommending for use against Legions has its origins in a dark gift commonly found in vampires. Historically, their species has enjoyed the most success at culling the legion hives down to size. Do you wish to feel the thrill of taking on an overwhelming mob and winning? Then seek out the ability. The Sorcerers are known to possess it, and from them the Torturers have learned the formula, though of course we prefer you take it from the source by slaying a vampire. (You would first need to learn the bloodmagic _ability transfer_ skill). Enjoy! Just try not to accidentally trigger a legion's bloodmagics. These can range from power boosts that are bad news for you all the way to _summonings_ that are **very** bad news…. for your entire planet.


	20. Ignis Fatuus & Infiltrators

The Fey

The ignis fatuus. The will 'o the wisp. Or, as they are known to those who have glimpsed their true visage, the faerie folk. The sprites who hide inside the light. These are creatures of invisibility and invisible realms; as much of their efforts go into _seeming_ as into being; they are unpredictability made flesh, and this is manifest in their very movement—they flit about, impossibly _here_ and then _there_ without ever bothering to actually cover the ground in between. It is indeed a fearful prospect, having to defend against these fey. So easily can they arrive where they are unwelcome. Equally daunting would be to _contain_ those whose very nature defies all such attempts. Be not deceived by the stories of kindly elves told by simpletons: faerie are creatures of sharp teeth and a fierce disposition who will not be bribed by gifts of cream or cakes left for them on doorsteps. Nor are they the weak and spindly sprites popularized by folk artists as butterflies with a commoner's face and pointy antennae. No. Though you may dote on such reveries when you hear the word _faerie_, the reality is much harsher. Any encounter with a genuine fey creature would abruptly end the fantasy of them as happy pets.

The Faerie possess all the viciousness found in nature and then some, along with the boundless vitality of eternal youth. Their forms are a blend of anthropomorphic features adorned with all the thorns and other defenses of nature's heartiest plants and animals. Their bodies do not _evolve_ so much as they manifest or _blossom_ _forth_ in the shape best suited to dealing with the current situation or crisis. How is this possible? The world you inhabit is only the surface reality, and the energies of life issue from far deeper within the underlying energy rift. The _faerie folk_ have chased these energies back to the inner reality, and it is there where they have learned to reside. It is the bright realm, and _not_ the underworld, to which they repair after each of their physical manifestations.

They have _harnessed_ nature's potential and set themselves above Nature, you see, collaring it the way a master collars his dog. Thus, as the overseers of life, they extract from Nature all the advantages of being alive without actually lowering themselves to the level of living creatures as the _ancients_ mistakenly did. Whereas the vampires foolishly slaved themselves to the life cycle, the _fey_ _creatures_ remain unbound by the wheel of fate. They remain supernatural entities who only _invest_ themselves in Nature, unfettered and in control. They are spirits who only dabble at taking on the trappings of life. They participate in the flow of living energy, even directing it, but they retain full autonomy.

Such was their ideal, anyway. Past tense. The faerie species has since joined the vampires' rebellion and fallen under the seductive influence of the light—the same light they were originally tasked with infiltrating. The Fey were to gain immunity to the light, immerse themselves in it, and cast about for ways in which they might corrode the light from within or otherwise stem its flow through the cosmos. This is what first led them to Nature, for they rode the light until it brought them into contact with plant life, at which point the ignis fatuus were present to experience the miracle as Light radiated into the green leaves and transferred the energies of the sun into plants and from there the blessed energies were conveyed into the bodies of those animals who fed upon the plants. All living things were aswim in light. At first, the fey reacted to this revelation as they should have: they celebrated the discovery of a new inroad into the secret workings of heaven. They sought to pry open these divine works to better understand how to cause heaven's downfall. They began to dutifully exploit Nature and disrupt the solar radiation so that higher organisms could not partake in this circuit of ennobling energy. Then, they themselves started partaking—to better understand the mystery, or so they told us. But over time it became clear the faerie folk had taken up stewardship of the forests, not to steer life into oblivion anymore but to shepherd it into ever greater health as they gloried in its radiance. Overseers of life, indeed. The great planetary gardeners and caretakers of life who make it their duty to spread pollen and seed and spore to every far corner of the world.

It is good, for their sake, that they have retained much of their former fierceness, as they now have need of it whenever we manage to descend upon them with our wrath.

KILL METHOD: BLIGHT

When sprites thrive, it is because of a thriving ecosystem. Cut away this support system so it is no longer there to buoy them. So deeply invested in the cultivation of life are they that their essence sickens whenever a rich abundance of living energies is snuffed out. If they dwell in forests, set fires in the underbrush so that the strength of the fey is carried away on winds of ash. If they dwell in swamps, summon shade sorceresses to choke the surrounding life away by making the bogs so fetid that nothing can thrive there. If the grasslands support countless herds presided over by sage centaur forms that rise out of the morning mists, bring desolation to the plains with toxins or through arcane means. Heat the oceans to disrupt the patterns of life there by agitating the volcanic fury within the earth. Once stripped of their prosperity, the inner fires of the faerie species will burn low, and, though still formidable as a foe, they will no longer possess their robust strength and regenerative powers. They can then be assailed even by the likes of you. But, should you try them…..

Faerie kith can bend light to obscure themselves from sight, or to disguise their appearance by putting on a glamor—a _seeming. _In the guise of a harmless swamp glow have they guided many a lost traveler. Due to having spent time in timeless realms their perception extends also into precognition, so do not rely overmuch on surprising them. To thwart their limited teleportation ability, have eyes all around. Approach faerie folk with your troops in formations capable of watching all the compass directions at all times. Pinwheeling cavalry formations deny the teleporter a safe entry point, providing you with what we in hell like to call _motion armor_. Deploy square formations of archers. However, even archers waiting with taut bowstrings may not be fast enough for sprites who flit in and out in a heartbeat and whose daggers find hearts just as fast. To truly neutralize the translocation powers of the fey, you must be willing to pay the blood price for cursed artifacts made in the spirit forges of the Innovators' wraith smiths. Their demontech includes a Renderer, or a device that turns mere probabilities into a certainty. These devices are oft used for cheating at games of chance, but you will use it to cheat the Fey of their power to elude you. Any sprite who teleports while near the device will find itself redirected in mid-flit so that it reappears only in the one spot you designate using the machine. Obviously, make that your kill zone and feed arrows and spears into it.

Because the faerie race has full access to the source of life and life's energies, they will be able to call upon all the ferocity they need in battle, in its purest undiluted form. Fey creatures channel their will to live, drawing it copiously from the source in a way that the lion and gazelle can only aspire to. This means their drive to either survive or escape will be crisper than yours, without fail, as if they were the paragon of all living things, and the vigor of their inner fire will be quite unmatched in your experience as a hunter. Do you begin to understand now why the fierceness of the faerie folk is legend? If not, they might yet teach you of it—as your last, fatal lesson. Truthfully, you need not concern yourself with cleansing the world of faerie. Our prophets have seen the future that awaits them, and it is one of starvation. The great and final Blight will come to wither and corrode all life from Nosgoth, and in the face of that planetary corruption no feykind will endure.

* * *

Infiltrators

Jinn / Rakshasa / Succubus / Regicide

Like the assassin bugs of the insect kingdom, Infiltrators wear bodies as if they were members of the species they have chosen to prey upon. They walk undetected among the living, passing into the population as one of you. Long before Life ever arose, the Infiltrators could already be found honing their craft by deceiving the other Patrons of Evil! At times they still do invade the secretive single-species domains of the evil ones, like predatory beetles disguising themselves as termites and strolling right into the hive! No matter what species is infiltrated, however, Infiltrators act as spies, saboteurs, forward attack elements, agents of chaos, and at times they have even replaced kings of men and ruled in their stead. Smokey gray true forms are revealed only when their imposture is discovered and they must fight to save their skins—or kill so as to reclaim secrecy. Also the presence of high ranking Patrons causes them to abandon any disguise so as not to appear to be deceiving their overlords.

If civilization could be described as a pavilion, then key members of that society are akin to tent poles holding their civilization aloft. Infiltrators target these leaders and merchantmen, inflaming their passions so that they tear loose from their proper place in society and become projectiles careening into the pavilion's other supports. Infiltrators will use this technique to bring a civilization down.

Tempting men toward evil ends, the _Rakshasa_ tries to take them to such a dark place that their sanity snaps and they are reduced to the old world ways of eating the flesh and blood of their own kind ritualistically, having been completely broken. Through intimacies the _Succubus_ steals vitality from mortals. The purposes of succubi have varied through history: sometimes they worm their way into the temples as prostitutes to profane those places, or they ruin a peaceful civilization by turning it wanton. Or else they partner with the Disease Bringers to spread harm by turning life's natural reproductive urges into a weapon of sterility or even death. In the midst of great wars _Regicides_ duplicate the body of a leader they've secretly slain and use the deception to either steer the war effort awry or to win the war and personally preside over an empire won through trickery. Millions have died unnecessarily on their watch. _Jinn_ will choke all the trust out of a society, drive a wedge of wariness between hearts that once felt a closeness, and bleed the cohesion from a people so they can no longer act with a united purpose. Jinn turn friendly competitors into cutthroat rivals by granting sudden wish-like gains to one at the expense of his neighbor. Surely, he believes, one of his own people must have betrayed his plans to the enemy, as only this could explain the swiftness of his rival's progress and his own subsequent failure. So when the jinn offers him an opportunity for reprisal, he accepts….. and all that his people have built over the generations unravels in the fires of chaos.

A society under siege must put in place a system to stop the Infiltrators' incursions. But who among you can detect these monsters with a familiar face? How to draw a battle line against a foe who is already everywhere among you? So a good castle defense should include training on how to prevent the kind of psyche subversion practiced by these smiling assassins. Maintain a healthy distrust of strangers, and even people you know well—subject them to periodic memory recall tests and take skin samples from them to check for inhuman changes in the decaying flesh.

For those castles with a war wizard, have them summon _shadow motes_ in the middle of the assembled townspeople and see if the motes are particularly drawn to a certain personage. If they fly through the air to the side of one who calls herself your friend, then you have a friend deeply allied with the powers of shadow, which means they have something to hide and are not what they seem.

KILL METHOD: EMBODIMENT CURSE

Ensnare the devil in the prison of its own "choosing." The Infiltrator has already magically imprinted itself as a member of your species. It did this in order to walk as one of you. Now, to capture it with ease, all you need do is complete that magical process. Pull _all_ of the monster's remaining essence through into the transformation, so that it becomes mortal in truth. Complete the ritual that the infiltrator left intentionally unfinished! Then its disguise will become its permanent reality and your otherworldly foe will be truly ensnared in the weak, pathetic body it has chosen to masquerade in. From that point on, you can slay it or arraign it for its crimes against your species. The monster's face will twist in horror as it realizes it no longer has access to any of its supernatural powers and cannot escape, cannot transform, cannot even fight you off effectively. You need fear it no more than you would fear one of your own. The _embodiment curse_ is known among shamans, demon hunters, or can be pilfered from the usual collectors of arcane power.

Should you choose to battle Rakshasas with their powers intact, however, they will doubtless provide you with more sport. Prepare for unnatural combat against one with the physicality of the tiger whose claws ignore armor as if it were not there. And of the succubus, be forewarned that some may prove extraordinarily difficult to kill, as if their health reserves were fathomless and neverending, for they may very well have built up a private stock of vitality and endurance from their many victims, banking that energy instead of spending it, making them literally the equal of an _army_, capable of emerging unscathed from a gauntlet of death that would have slain dragons, their lithe forms possessed of strength beyond measure. –For a time. A Regicide is skilled at disappearing into a crowd and assuming a new identity—frequently if need be, especially if it is being pursued by hunters who know its true nature. This becomes an unenviable position for those in the mortal throng, since the monster could now be looking out from behind the eyes of anyone they meet. It takes very little from the monster to fray the nerves of the "hunters" then as it proceeds to pick them off one by one and chaos reigns. Avoid this.


	21. Trueform Terrors : Last of the monsters

Trueform Terrors

The Magnitude Gatherers. Hell's greatest enigma and its greatest success story, they are the rarest of all patron species. Yet they are also the most ascendant. It is their destiny to supplant hell's demigods and ultimately carry Our dominance to the heavens and rule in divinity's place as a new breed of sovereign being in the cosmos. Not yet fully matured, they gather strength in the shadows.

The other patron species of evil were listed in order of prestige. The Terrors seek no prestige. They remain aloof, a mystery. Alien. So though they appear last here, that is only because they do not participate in patron society and have not yet claimed the place reserved for them. In truth they are already first in power and growing ever stronger. They could easily overwhelm the others were they to concern themselves with rulership.

No record exists of a Trueform ever having been slain.

Their physical shapes are even more fearsome than the Enslaved Ones. While the Enslaved are the undisputed champions over all who rely on brute force alone, the domain of the Terrors extends beyond mere physical strength into the stratosphere of power normally reserved for demigods. And so they augment their nature with unnatural, untouchable qualities that make their forms so stable, so robust, so terrible to contend with that they cannot be defeated. Massive tree-like entities with leviathan tentacles bursting from their backs in lieu of branches; Netherworld sky squids with tentacles inclining earthward to wrench apart the mountain fastnesses where the last bastions of living beings cower bereft of hope. These Terrors will not condescend to appear in bipedal form as Colossals are wont to do—that would be an homage to the gods, and the Terrors would rather usurp the gods and reshape their world so that _nothing_ remains in the image of the gods.

Trueform Terrors have turned every battle they have ever joined, merely by engaging themselves in it. They have a huge impact on enemy tacticians who have no answer for them and are forced to retreat or die on every occasion. (Trueforms are united in purpose and refuse to engage one another in battle, so whichever side they ally with is fated to be the victor). The territory held by the losing faction decreases as the Terror advances and these lost regions can never be recaptured so long as the Terror haunts them, as none can stand against them. Ever. This continues until the Trueforms become like a noose closing in to strangle the geography of the enemy. Fear collects around their names. In them can be seen the bodily proof that the time of gods is coming to an end.

The Terrors are the embodiment of what evil sought to accomplish by invading this universe and contaminating the gods. These beings best represent the kind of forms we will take as our final incarnation, once we have completed our conversion into omnipotent lords of matter. The outmoded hellgods are still based on the old model of divinity and amount to little more than crudely hollowed out mimicries of the holy, like so many carvings we made on the eve of our defection from the abyss when our understanding was still quite limited. The Terrors are a more significant stride in our development, for they have arisen as part of a Secondary Creation born of our abyssal nature. Whereas the demigods are holdovers from the Original Creation merely recast in our image, the Trueforms usher in a new age in which we have become the creators and have truly come into our own. They will carry us forward in ways the demigods cannot.

Despite appearances, they are still not fully grown and remain in the equivalent of a tadpole stage of development, so the demis yet hold sway and will for some time to come as the Terrors mature, but it is this growth potential that sets Trueforms apart from the hellgods who have always been constants, defined over the ages by their unchanging power level. This makes the demis a known quantity, while the Terrors have unlimited potential and in the vastness of cosmic time they will surpass all rivals. The hellgods are aware of this inevitable shift in power that looms ahead, but they will not move against the Terrors except to help prepare them with appropriate challenges and trials: both are one with the mind of evil and are its champions, therefore the demis _want_ to see the day when they are supplanted by a _worthy_ successor, one of the abyss' children who is stronger and more evolved. The ascension of Trueforms will only prove that our timeline is on schedule and we remain on track toward deification.

The defining trait of Trueforms is their ability to track down precious deposits of divine magnitude and convert this lost glory of the gods directly into their own demonic ascendancy. This ability is unique to the Terrors. Demons and the other Patron types feed upon the holy because they hunger to become more substantial like the gods, but that is the extent of it: feeding. Sustenance. They do not find themselves being permanently accelerated toward godlike apotheosis as do the Trueform Terrors. The only permanent benefit the others derived from absorbing glory was that it granted them solidity, which had at first been of paramount concern to ancestral demons. Other than that, they felt empowered for a time by the magnitude they consumed, but because they had merely broken it down and digested it the benefits were fleeting, as with any other form of sustenance, and the dark forces burned through their newfound power supply like the finite resource that it was. They had only succeeded in securing a personal store of the gods' magical energies for one-time use like an energy bank that, once depleted, was gone forever. So, with the exception of a few hoarders, the hellions quickly squandered the godly power they had won during the war, using it as fuel for enhanced sorceries similar to when the gods had sacrificed their power under extreme duress. Halfway through the Primordial era there was almost nothing left to show for their victory over heaven. Only the True Terrors had developed the equivalent of photosynthesis which allowed them to absorb magnitude intact and wield it in the way the gods did—as a stable, permanent basis of power that could be used indefinitely. While other patrons were forced to expend their shares of the substance until their powers went into decline, Trueforms maintained steady power output levels over time, like gods.

But unlike the deities, who were limited to their original allotment of magnitude, these monsters were able to scrounge for more and augment themselves further. As soon as the full significance of this was understood, the race was on to find the richest deposits as each Terror attempted to fuel its ascension as speedily as could be. Several events occurred that in your experience could only be described as gold rushes, and a ruthless zero sum game developed between the miners. The Pandemonium battlefield was originally littered with the shards of broken gods, along with the embers of their burning potential and half-spent energy weapons lost in battle. Such remnants have since become rarities as many were consumed and others sunk beneath the fate plains. Hell's terrors sniff out those like truffles, and already they have begun turning their eyes upon the demigods, who, bankrupt as they are, must still be the richest concentrations of godly ichor to remain unplundered! In time, as Trueforms grow stronger, it will become commonplace for them to feed upon the hellgods directly. Though so far their attempts have been only tentative, and the demis have managed to throw them off, but not with ease.

KILL METHOD: NONE EXISTS

LIGHT: As of yet the Terrors refuse to leave the shadows and do not expose themselves to stellar radiation. This means they are unavailable for wars that take place on worlds bathed in light. Over the eons, they have been weaving darkness into their hides in a process that will end with them being proof against all things. But in the meantime, any exposure to light causes them discomfort and unravels their unfinished shadow glyphs. Do not imagine that this makes your starshine dimension safe, however. The Nightmares have blotted out the sun of many a world, hiding the star from view so as to pave the way for hell's champions to emerge & impose their presence upon darkened globes doomed to fall under sway of demonic torment. By time's end, this new reality will have spread to all the worlds as Creation is everywhere swept aside and replaced by Terror.

* * *

These are the Patron Species of Evil.

Our catalogue is finished.

At this point you know the names and faces of malice. You know yourself to be doomed.

So this codex now moves on.

Done are we with this Gallery of Horrors. We will not concern ourselves anymore with the exploits of these monstrous species. By now you will have guessed their atrocities. All their deeds are closely tied together with their natures and can be anticipated: They simply repeated their core crimes over and over again, visiting their evils upon each other and upon the denizens of thousands of worlds. Of this the history of the Primordial Dark was smelted.

This then was the first and longest eaon, when time moved more slowly, before the inertia of the ages quickened time's passage to the feverish pace at which it slips through your fingers today. Back then, time still remembered eternity and each moment hungered to last forever. That is why our dominance during the Primordial Dark will never be matched by any future era… No matter how the holy might try. For it is they who ended the Dark.

It is time for the story of their chosen species, the ancient vampires, and how their uprising tore the hegemony of evil races apart.

The time has come for you to learn of …..

The Coming of The Light


	22. The Coming of the Light

The Coming of the Light

And following fast on the heels of light came the emergence of Life. And then the gods' great gift to the world of man—The Pillars of Nosgoth. With these Ninefold Spires the divine attempted to pour a balm onto the world's wounds. The Pillars are the holy construct they would use to turn the tide of evil. With the appearance of this divine edifice, the battle for control of cosmic Fate was rejoined!

It all began abruptly with the birthing of stars. This was the Divine's great counterstrike against our demonic invasion of their cosmos. We had claimed the darkness as victors, and now They were intent on lighting up the void to chase the darkness away and forever alter the playing field. For untold ages the gods had been reeling in defeat, and now they had returned to the fight, but had chosen to do so indirectly, smartly, and in a way unforseen. When the first stellar furnaces ignited and spewed their fury across the vast expanse of space, the hegemony quailed. The demon princes knew it was no coincidence that these newborn stars were warming the universe with the exact same sort of radiation first invented by the god Igni during Pandemonium, our initial onslaught.

Igni had happened upon a way of hurting us, but the gods had not put their discovery into widespread use during the war except in the form of high-powered extermination lances of light sent hurtling into the abyss with murderous effect. Now this abhorrent creation, this _Light_, burst forth in unending waves from every remote region of the cosmos in a coordinated strike. We later learned that the very physics of the cosmos had been reworked by the gods in secret when they delved deep into the heart of reality so long ago. At this preordained moment in time, the curtain of shadow was destined to be ripped away from us and the void made into a conductor of this starry glow. The haze that had obscured the early universe parted and its particles were now able to emit and transfer light at great distances. It had been an inevitability long kept hidden from our prophets!

The light burned us and made us a known quantity, our every movement visible and exposed while our holy adversary remained unseen, watching us from beyond our reach. We felt the shift, felt suddenly vulnerable, like we were being marked somehow for further aggression. We sensed that our dominance was being challenged and ourselves targeted as prey by this emergent new stellar phenomenon. We wondered aloud what other revelations the gods had managed to obscure from us along the timeline. What other hammers loomed over our hegemony, waiting to fall with crushing blows?

This first hammerfall was enough to send the Patrons scurrying deep underground. We removed our cities to the deep and rebuilt our places of strength beyond light's touch, venturing forth onto the surface with redoubled malice only when the turning of each planet brought with it blessed Night. But back in our homelands near the Destiny Forge, the Demigods and Terrors were not satisfied with this new shared dominance of Night and Suns. They responded emphatically to remove themselves from Light's touch. With the aid of vast feeds of power from the Nightmares and Dark Seers and Bloodmages, the overlords of hell joined together to perform one of the greatest sorceries in history. They took hold of all the territory now called hell, which the hegemony of evil had laid claim to during the Long Dark, and all along hell's borders they tore their realms loose from reality. _They folded themselves away within a dimensional barrier of their own making!_ Hell was encased and walled up within this twisted dimensional framework. It became a realm encapsulated. Fenced off from divine incursion, hell's populace would remain uncontaminated by solar winds. Whatever holy scheme now unfurled across the rest of space, it would never bear fruit here in the demon dimension. _So it came to pass that all Patrons of Evil who wished to remain pure were __**banished**__ from the sea of stars_!

The demon princes departed the material realm. Only much later would this self-imposed banishment zone truly become a prison. Only when the whispers of the holy led multitudes of solarian mages to _electrify_ our dimensional fence, trapping we the undying ones in our realm of fire. But that confinement came in a later age, during a later struggle. For the time being, we were still free to send hell's minions ranging far and wide at night, and demons plagued the worlds of mortals with a vengeance. Nor were the Patron Species gone from the material realm, only driven underground. The patrons did not truly retreat from the world until the ancients taught them defeat during the Uprising. So for an age hence the patrons could still be seen leading forays onto the surface. Their rule was no longer uncontested, but they in fact still ruled the material realm by virtue of how no other Power had yet materialized to eclipse their own.

As the hegemony waited in dread for worthy opposition to arise, little did they suspect that it would come from within their own ranks! They were distracted by the emergence of Life, and were too busy assaulting Life in all the ways we have previously described. _They did not notice the change in the bloodmages_, the vampyres who were most obsessed of all Patrons with feeding on living beings. As hunters, their existence became deeply intertwined with that of their prey, and vampires developed many quirks and fetishes and behavioral oddities, all of which were easily forgiven-being the paramount killers that they were, vampires drew no suspicion from the rest of the dark species. So when the vampires began to congregate strangely and evolve apart from the others, it was assumed they were evolving into a new kind of evil. Surely, we felt, this experiment would earn the blessing of hell's princes and the bloodmages would lead us all on to new heights of gruesome debauchery. We were wrong. The path they now walked would lead them to diverge from the mind of evil and step into the light. It was the holy who now whispered in their minds and gave them direction.

The bloodmages had gorged on Life so deeply that it infected them with its essence. Addicted to Life's vitality, they hungered for more. Never sated. When they killed now, _they drained their prey with such desperate yearning because they craved after the souls within_! _They would grasp at the soul, yet the soul would always slip away beyond their reach at the moment of each victim's death. In time, the blooddrinkers would be willing to do whatever it took to ensoul themselves. They would change their nature irrevocably, and add their names onto the gods' scrolls of living beings so that they might be born ensouled._ Already they were able to endure the sunlight better than the rest of us, and stayed out longer into the daylight hours after the others had retreated underground, and their accounts of how they spent these hours were never complete… We knew not what they did in their time alone on the surface. We did not know what they were building.


	23. Eternity's Beckoning Whisper

Eternity's Beckoning Whisper

The souls sang to them. Through every opened vein they heard the call of infinity. Each heartbeat thundered in their ears as they fed, but underneath the steady drum of life's pulse there came another music, the true symphony: the soul's songs of synchronicity filtered through the bloodflow to dance sweetly at the farthest reaches of their hearing, where it registered as the faintest golden murmuring. This susurrus of sound from beyond the world contained a feeling of completeness they had never known existed. It arrested their minds and would become the driving force behind all of their rapacious hunting over the ages. As the hunters chased after the heavenly music they drank ever deeper from the veins of countless victims, always longing to hear more clearly the song of eternity. In it they felt something worth striving for. As each life drained away, the blooddrinkers listened intently for hints of forbidden truths contained in the song, until at last they became convinced of a revelation so profound that it taught the vampires awe:

They had existed all this time in a tide pool, and were only now beginning to hear the sound of the ocean.

All the blood lore they had accumulated was but a trickle compared to the timeless lore sea to which the souls returned upon death. The true home of purpose and identity and knowledge lay elsewhere. Only a portion bled through into this reality as Life came and went from this world like the tide. And as the spirit ebbed from a body the vampires could hear the rushing of the waves that carried the soul off thither to eternity where they could not follow. With all their might, they endeavored to lay hold of the elusive soul, so that it might carry them hence. All manner of bloodmagics were bent to the cause. They began work on spirit phylacteries, leaving their uncorrupted bodies behind while the vampire's malignant consciousness was sent to dwell within the soul of a victim. Then, as death occurred, their hope was to ride along as a stowaway during the soul's transit into the bright realm beyond, like a shadow darkening the heart of the gleaming ghost.

This and all their other efforts to access the lore sea were denied. In frustration, they consulted with the Dead Kings to see if the undead possessed soul secrets that bloodmages did not. Cheating death _in this world_ came easily to the DeadKings, and they had forayed far into the underworld and returned to tell their tales, yet even for them there was a point of no return located deep in the spirit lands beyond which none had successfully ventured. And it was to this region that the souls of the dead were inexorably drawn, spiraling down and down until they passed beyond into the truly unknown. The Dead Kings had mastered the art of resisting this downward pull of the netherworld and fighting their way back into the material realm as spectres, but they had no advice to offer on how to pass the final absolute barrier and conquer the energy realm of the souls.

So the vampires strove in vain to pull back the curtain from death's barrier, catching only stolen glimpses of the extradimensional sea of lore that lay beyond. It was a sea not of blood but of an energy medium whose waves lapped over into the spirits of living creatures to ensoul them. But despite their failures the vampires did not despair. As the ages quickly passed they were lured into gorging themselves on the ensouled until, quite unexpectedly, _they reached the point of saturation_. This tipping point in their evolution would become the fulcrum of history as well. They had so immersed themselves in soulstuff and bathed in living nutrients that their bodies began changing to resemble the ones whom they consumed. They adopted the two legged form of the sentient beings on whom they preyed most fervently—all the better to hunt them undetected, supposedly, but in truth they took this form because _they were starting to feel most at home whilst walking in the shapes of living organisms._ As a patron species of evil, their skins and organs were of a toxic substance that could not yet rightly be called 'alive,' but this was changing too. Vampires were now awash in the building blocks of life—their tissues were readying for the transformation that was to come, as if the bloodmages were already subconsciously preparing themselves for the day when they would join with the life cycle of birth, death, and rebirth! This option had not yet occurred to their waking minds. And it was none of them who thought of it. The notion was planted in their consciousness by another, more stellar being known to us as The Oversoul.

The Oversoul of Nosgoth was taking them under Its wing. Instead of the futility of them scratching and clawing away at the soul barrier with no real progress, _something of the netherworld now lurched towards them_ to meet halfway. The meeting took place in the form of expanded consciousness. The entity gave voice to the unspoken wishes in their minds, and their habits and behaviors changed accordingly as It nudged them into the light, initiating changes that would shake their world to the core.

Around each thriving planet an Oversoul entity coalesces as a force of Nature that shepherds the life cycle unseen. The Oversoul acts to keep the wheel of fate churning smoothly. It oversees the steady transmigration of souls on which such life zones depend. Oversouls are an amalgam of spectral energies drawn together from the depths of the planet below, from the vastness of the starry skies above, and from the fae regions that lie outside mortal understanding. If one could stand on the moon and view the world from there with the spectral sight of a ghost, one might just see the outline of the Oversoul taking shape to encompass the globe like the ghost of the magnetosphere that it is, only with a vibrancy all Its own, like an aurora pulsing in patterns of intelligent design. Then, if the entity manifested itself at closer range, appearing to a favored observer, its nebulous glow might resolve further to reveal an image of the being's chosen _Aspect,_ writ in light. Spirit energies arising from the ecosystem make the entity possible. Often there is no animating consciousness, as if only a great cosmic hum—or ohm—pervaded all, and this constant coaxing alone compelled life's molecules up the ladder of complexity. Such untended planets can wind down or become unbalanced to the point of failure, however, after something as trivial as a meteor impact, and there is no way of righting them.

Other worlds—especially those that house the gods' more precious experiments—are more actively watched over, as is Nosgoth. Here, an incorporeal consciousness slyly descended from the blessed realm to galvanize the energies of the planet into a cohesive, responsive entity. This consciousness then gently stirred the ecosystem, directing it in subtle ways hidden from all eyes. Since the gods dare not walk openly in the material realm after their last defeat, they employ this _unseen mover_ tactic to avoid detection while they steer the development of life on each sphere to reach a desired endpoint of their design. Nosgoth was among the key planets in their grand offensive. All _seemed_ to unfold naturally, without their interference—as intended—right up until they turned the vampires. After that, their interference was impossible to hide. Later events would unmask Nosgoth's Oversoul entity, revealing It to be an aspect of the goddess Moksha, whose destiny would become as sordid as the vampires' own, with her fate and theirs entwined.

Hers was the Voice the mages heard gurgling up into their awareness through the blood. To them this was the greatest of mysteries—it appeared as if the blood lore had accumulated to the point where a sentience had risen up within it. She spoke inside their minds, the first to awaken in vampires the gift that they call _**The Whisper**_. A silent, secretive communication in the lilting tones of the divine speech, her whispers led them on to commit their species to the changes. As evil ones, so tentative was their connection to the light that at first the mages could not understand the divine tongue which even the least of starborn mortal creatures can instantly intuit once their ears are exposed to it. However, such is the way of the language of heaven that though its words may sound foreign and unintelligible to creatures of darkness, yet _the meaning those words were intended to convey is felt unmistakenly_ in the heart of the listener. The ancients did as they were bid to do, and all too willingly, for the Voice of the Lady led them on to the fulfillment of their wish.

_She spoke seductively of the sweetness of the blood of ages_, as befit a voice of luring and enchantment, and as the vampires lay sated they would drift off on reveries inspired by Her promises of a wider reality that called to them, beckoning. Perhaps they did not fathom the full significance of it when Moksha's sleepy singsong entreaties eventually spake of _disentangling from fate_. As her disembodied chants played in their heads, this became a recurring theme: time and again the blooddrinkers were made to feel and understand how wondrous the day would be when they could at last set fate aside. Having no reason to distrust Moksha they took this truth in stride with all the other heady wonders they beheld. All would reveal itself to them at the proper time. Their brutish instincts had been much informed by listening to the music of the spheres, and in the divine speech they heard arrayed all of the rich possibilities of this existence, presented and ordered in such a tantalizing way that they aspired to live out this richer existence, no longer content with what the darkness offered. Heeding the whispers instilled in them higher instincts and they became invested with knowledge unknown to the thrones of evil at whose feet they had learned their former cruelty. As the ancient vampires took on greater similarity to living creatures, they began feeling a kind of gravity pulling them to complete the transformation and cross over into a forbidden future.

Nor did they balk when the message shifted to one of species wide repurposing. Immense tasks and preparations they undertook while the changes swept them along toward the end they craved above all else—oneness with the souls. Access to the souls would enable them to tap into the vast reservoirs of spectral lore they could feel surging just below the surface of this reality. If they had to interact with Nature and even with agents of the Divine in order to complete the change, so be it. A great victory for demonkind was in the making, and it was worth any price, worth any…._sacrifice_. Yet, when their brethren in the hegemony asked about the odd behavior and changing forms of the vampires, something strange happened. _The vampires lied._ They did not reveal the presence of the Sanguinity, she who had arisen within the lore to speak their names. They concealed the responsibilities she delegated to them. Inwardly, they already knew that the mind of evil would never approve of their journey's destination. It no longer mattered. Near the beginning of time, one of hell's Singularities had first invented lies as a tool for advancing chaos, and Its wroth was terrible when It learned of the vampires' abuse of lies, for they had twisted deception around into the service of heaven.

And in the place where Moksha had charged them with delving deep in the earth, they made _nine shafts to bring sunlight filtering down onto the altar in the subterranean chamber below_ so that only the Vampires could stand in that place during the day, when the sun forced all other patron species to retreat. This meant no siege could be sustained against the location, any assault being broken off by the dawn. And since the place's defenses were strong enough that it could not be taken by force in a single night, it could not be taken at all. It proved unassailable by the patrons who were relegated to the night. So the _altar of the world_ remained unseen by outside eyes. So it went as the years passed, until curiosity increased among the other patrons to the point where some became determined to uncover the secret of the vampires.

The threat was that, even though none could not capture the site, one might perhaps get close enough to espy it from above by fighting its way down the sun shafts at night. Any who tried to actually descend all the way into the chamber below met an abrupt end thanks to ingenious earthen defenses that crushed, impaled, and entombed. But if one of the crawling things of the night managed to perch itself halfway down in deft defiance of the deadly fortifications, then there was the chance it could sound out the cavern with sonar or employ other enhanced powers of perception to scan the area before escaping to report its findings. This was an unacceptable risk. For part of each day, night would fall upon the altar; eventually, this was intended to allow vampires to admit the more nightbound patron species into that place, but only when the time was right. And that time had not yet come, so for the first time in their existence vampires began to dread the night and what it might bring!

So it was that one of Moksha's early directives to the ancients was to harvest from deep in the earth peculiar crystalline formations and lug them into the vicinity of the altar. These crystal communities were then fostered by the Oversoul, fed on Its energies so that their shattered mass healed and attached to the walls of the cave with unprecedented vigor whilst their growth rate accelerated far beyond the standard glacial pace of geode growth. With wonder, the ancients beheld the fruits of their labor as these mystically altered crystals absorbed sunlight during the day and retained enough of it to glow softly through the night, staving off true darkness. The eerie glow had the added benefit of securing the cave at night from the prying eyes of other evil species. Any such invaders felt pained and disoriented, and so novel were these sun lanterns that a general sense of alarm and malaise soon unnerved the intruders and triggered in them an instinctive response to retreat as if before the dawn. This would not be the end of these strange crystals' usefulness, but for the nonce they were content to enliven the mages' sanctuary with their protective aura until the day came when everything changed.

_On that day the Oversoul called to all vampires who would listen, summoning them to the altar to transform their immortal, soulless, inert flesh and bring it to life. This was their secret. In this all of their clandestine efforts culminated. They were being joined to the mysteries of Nature, learning to die so that they might live ensouled and unlock the promises of the netherworld. As a side effect, they discovered joy while realizing the full potential of _this_ existence. The seduction was complete, and over the next eon many more benefits gradually emerged from this alliance with Life which allowed the Ancients to flourish. _

The ritual started small with only the vampire population of Nosgoth, but before long vampires from many worlds were portaling in to Nosgoth to take part in the ritual before returning to their foreign spheres to spread the change like a cancer throughout the known worlds. And though only a small part of the overall population partook in the ritual, the new breed would become the majority. That was part of the gift given them—the ability to reproduce and grow in number exponentially like any other Living being. The Originals—those immortals who refused the ritual—opposed these upstarts in the wars that followed and never joined the life cycle. But the ranks of Originals only diminished in number as attrition claimed them over the ages. They were unable to replace their fallen and went into decline until, to preserve what remained of their species, they were forced into the indignity of sending thralls into battle in their place. By then the face of the species had changed.

The vampires did not understand what they had set in motion. They did not comprehend that the altar where they gathered would one day become the foundation of the Pillars of Nosgoth. They did not fathom that this transformation of theirs would be counted as the first historical use of the Pillar of States. The ancients could not have imagined that this holy altar would place them at the center of all things. Their hearts would have exploded in their chests if they'd known at that moment just how demanding their path would be and how much the universe would ask of them. All that the ancients knew at the time was that a second distinct colour of light suddenly lowered into their presence mingled within the eighth shaft of sunlight that bathed their altar. Motes swam in the purple hue of this visitation, and the beam did not originate from within the planet's star but filtered down from elsewhere in the distant heavens. In truth, it had no point of origin in normal space. The lightform danced invitingly. Luminescent tendrils reached out to them as they drew near. Bloodmages walked into the living light and were infused; Ancients emerged transformed after bathing in its warmth. They breathed. Their hearts beat. They were now dependent on chemical exchanges with the environment. They felt the first initial thrills of being alive and cried out in astonishment. Each discovered that part of the glow had remained with him and emanated now from within his breast. They had been affixed to the wheel of fate and each now bore a soul within and was capable of feeling something other than shades of malice—the only emotions they had ever known before.

Since vampires had not been part of the natural order before that moment, Moksha normally would not have aided them and should never have incorporated the ancients under Nature's umbrella. No, a special allowance was made in order for bloodmages to join the wheel of fate. In this matter, the Oversoul did the bidding of others…. It was the deities of the Ninefold Spires who conspired with Moksha to attach vampires to the life cycle! This was but the beginning of their scheme—once the bloodmages were secretly attached to Life, these same nine deities would later invest the better part of themselves into forging the Pillars of Nosgoth. Through this divine construct, planetary power normally only accessible by the Oversoul would be conferred upon the uplifted ancients. The change was profound: Oversouls were—to all appearances—neutral forces of Nature who did nothing to openly incite the ire of demons, whereas the same powers in the hands of hallowed Ancients would be wielded with deliberate intent against demons to great effect and with great precision for many an age to come. The gods would try to use the ancient vampires as their automatons! They'd force the ancients to fight heaven's wars, bestowing the might of deities on chosen Guardians while the real gods remained quarantined in the blessed realm where they cowered safely removed from the horrible attrition that would claim their earthly servants.

And here at the beginning of this grand undertaking it was in truth none other than the divine essence of Efrileen that descended into the pit the vampires had wrought, having come there to empower their miracle of state change. Moksha deferred to the god, who took the reins and guided the Oversoul's energies into more specific patterns to achieve more precise results, like an ethereal surgeon performing a bevy of soul attachment procedures on all the enthralled zombies who stumbled forward into the inhabited light. The mages fulfilled their part in the ritual by activating a great blood magic which encompassed the altar in a field of flux—all who entered into that space were made susceptible to alteration, proclaiming to the Oversoul in their preferred magical language of blood lore, '_Make of us what you will_.' Afterwards that place would always feel inhabited, even after the lightform manifestation ceased, for a part of Efrileen stayed invested in the divine construct forevermore. Hers was the animating force that thrummed deep in the earth to form the living core of what would become the Pillar of States. Just as this god had anchored itself to the altar of the world, so would eight others ultimately bind themselves in shared sacrifice.

Their victories were numerous and long lived, and are detailed next, though as their first converts the vampires would now ironically live and die in a flicker as mortals. And though much of what will follow in this account of the ancient world may give the reader hope, understand this: For their reckless involvement in these blatant acts of heavenly aggression, the remnants of the pillar gods Keloran, Avahneshta, Riannor, Setair, Keshvahi, Cobalitan, Luviniatha, Efrileen, and Xilthonos were hunted down and slain by the demon princes of hell. And what of the Ancients? Their rising star shone bright indeed for ages to come while they served as heavenly stewards for those worlds infected by harmony and grace. Nevertheless, vampires condemned themselves to walk the path of the accursed on this very day when they first betrayed the hegemony of darkness and strayed too far into the light.


End file.
